


100 Days

by borogroves



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-15 12:24:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 147,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borogroves/pseuds/borogroves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt and Blaine have been best friends (and nothing more) since the age of six.  Now 22-year-old college graduates, they take a roadtrip around the USA, visiting every state in 100 days.  Fifty states.  Two boys.  One love story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Day -001: Saturday 15 September, 2012  
T-Minus One**

“Well, if I didn't know how much you hated Maine before...” Kurt trailed off, glancing up at Blaine as he drank deeply from his bottle of water and wiped across his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I don't hate it,” he said, setting the bottle down next to Kurt's and leaning back against the edge of the table, the sticky wood entirely characteristic of The Cannery, their local bar; everything worn and in dire need of replacement. “I'm just... I'm done here.”

“I know you are. It's time we both got out,” Kurt replied. “For good this time, not just for a year across the pond.”

“I still wish you could have come with me,” Blaine affirmed, a wistful smile tugging at the edges of his mouth before he added, “That’s exactly why I'm happy we're doing this, though. But first, I have a gig to finish. Two more songs, I promise.”

“Alright. But Blaine—“

Kurt was stopped abruptly as Blaine placed a finger across his lips, and he fought the childish impulse to stick out his tongue and lick.

“They're good ones, I swear,” Blaine told him with a wink that, were it anyone else, Kurt would have considered bordering on flirtatious. But this was Blaine; his best friend of sixteen years. Despite the crush that Kurt tended to harbor for him whenever he found himself single—and, in fact, almost constantly since Blaine’s return from London—he would never have thought of acting on it. They had so much shared history, and so many boundaries in place that had helped keep them exactly what they were to one another. It was nothing more than an occasional harmless crush, perhaps even some bastardized version of hero worship. Kurt never spent too long thinking about it.

Blaine took his place on stage amongst the other members of his band once more, strumming the opening bars of what Kurt vaguely recognized as [a OneRepublic song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/43884771291). The Spinning Cogs, reunited for one night only, had spent the previous hour or so playing music that was about getting out, taking off, breaking free. It was a difficult message to miss.

 _“This town is colder now, I think it's sick of us,”_ Blaine sang, shooting him a grin, and Kurt good-naturedly rolled his eyes.

“You've got it bad.”

Kurt almost jumped out of his skin and his breath came raggedly for a few moments as he glared at the girl sitting down across the booth from him.

“April, I swear to god if you keep on about that...”

“Aw, Kurt, come on,” April cajoled him with a nudge of her shoulder. “You know they say you tell the truth when you're drunk.”

“Okay, one: I wasn't drunk,” Kurt said hotly, entirely sick of the conversation that had seemed to be playing on a loop for the past three weeks. “Two: I was speaking objectively. Of course Blaine's hot. Have you seen him? I mean, you'd have to be blind. But I don't think of him that way; it's _weird.”_

“Denial is not just a river in Egypt,” April quipped, looking at him like she could read his mind, which only irritated him more.

“And old clichés are not going to make me start spilling my guts to you about my feelings for Blaine,” Kurt retorted, before appending, “or lack thereof.”

They stared each other down for a long moment before finally cracking up and dissolving into a fit of laughter.

“I'm really gonna miss you, Kurt,” April said, looping her arm through his as the band segued smoothly into The Rescues' _[Break Me Out](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/43884863088)._

“It's only three months,” Kurt reminded her. “We’ll see you guys in Michigan, and Anchorage, and we’ll all be back here in time for New Year’s.”

“You'd better be coming back. It's bad enough that you're skipping town on your birthday. And _only_ three months? You're my best friend, what's gonna become of me without you?” April asked, sighing dramatically with the back of her hand to her forehead. “I swear, when we meet up, I'll be sporting only the very best of Walmart couture.”

“Ugh, please don't talk about Walmart,” Kurt groaned. “We'll be parking the R.V. at one too many for my liking. Can you catch bad taste through proximity and exposure?”

April snorted, and they lapsed into silence to enjoy the rest of the song. It was the last song of the last performance that The Spinning Cogs would ever give, but Kurt caught himself thinking that it was almost comforting, the way one thing could end and something new could immediately take its place. It didn't always happen, and sometimes when it did it was far from comforting, but they were standing at the beginning of a road. They were about to embark upon a journey that would take them to every state in the country.

 _“Break me out,”_ Blaine sang, holding the last note, and the band wound up the song with a huge crescendo that rang in Kurt's ears. He watched as Blaine hugged Stuart, Jeff and Max in turn, before the band began to pack up their things, a sense of closure seeming to settle upon their shoulders. Soon, Blaine was bouncing over to Kurt with his guitar case in tow, still running on his performance high.

“That's coming with us, right?” Kurt asked, gesturing to the case.

“I thought you said there wouldn't be room,” Blaine replied.

“We'll make room,” Kurt said lightly, before turning to April. “Thank you so much for throwing us this party. I'll miss you too, you know.”

“You'd better, or else what have you got to come back for?” she bantered, though her dark eyes were swimming. “Oh, come here.” She pulled Kurt into a hug, rocking him from side to side.

“You're always my best girl,” Kurt said, voice muffled against her shoulder as he squeezed her so tightly that even _he_ was a little short of breath.

“Alright, go, before I take you hostage,” April instructed, stepping back to wave a hand between him and Blaine. “Be careful, be safe, and look out for each other. Get back here in one piece, okay?”

“Promise,” Blaine said, sweeping her into a brief hug of his own. “Later, April.”

They remained quiet on the short drive back to their street. When they arrived at Kurt's house, Blaine stopped just long enough for Kurt to get out, before continuing on to park his beloved Honda in his mom's garage, where it would remain until next year.

Kurt took his brief window of alone time to run his fingers over the corners of uneven walls and the wavering mantel over the open fireplace that he’d always hated for all of its ugly imperfection, yet now found himself inexplicably fond of. He wandered almost aimlessly through the living room to the den with new eyes that no longer seemed aware of the slight fray to the edges of the carpet or the small bubbles in the wallpaper that betrayed the presence of damp pockets trapped against the stucco beneath.

“You're going to miss this place. Admit it, Hummel,” Blaine said, and Kurt's breath caught for a tiny measure at the sight of him leaning casually against the door frame, the spare house key from underneath the mat catching the light as Blaine turned it between his fingers.

“Don't know what you're talking about. It's not like we haven't left home before, Blaine,” Kurt reminded him, because they were graduates— _adults_ —now, leaving aside the fact that most of the time Kurt still felt like a confused, angry teenager.

“We came home most weekends. It's different this time,” Blaine said, pushing off the frame and dropping the key onto the mantel before settling onto the arm of the couch. As usual, he looked entirely at ease in his own skin, a quality that Kurt had envied as long as he could remember. “What time are Burt and Carole due back?”

“Late, I think. Dad mentioned something about _Gone With The Wind_ showing at Eveningstar,” Kurt said. Blaine followed him into the kitchen, watched as he pulled ingredients from the pantry and set them down by the stove.

“He'd never sit through that movie for someone he wasn't crazy for, would he?” Blaine asked knowingly, yet carefully.

Kurt exhaled sharply, opened his mouth, but said nothing.

“So it's our last night,” Blaine said brightly, parting the tension like he was Moses facing down the Red Sea. Bumping their hips together, he sidled in close, rested his head on Kurt's shoulder with an adoring look, and simpered, “What's for dinner, honey?”

Kurt elbowed him away and concealed the grin he wasn’t yet ready to give into. _“You_ are making my favorite because it's my birthday tomorrow and it'll be consolation for whatever terrible shirt you got me this year. And I'm making cornbread because you were great today and I was proud of you.”

“I hope so,” Blaine said fondly, grabbing a mixing bowl from beneath the sink and setting to work on his Aztec couscous. They moved around one another in the kitchen with a near-silent, practiced ease that had come from years of learning one another by heart.

When everything was ready, they set themselves up in the Adirondack chairs on the back deck, counting fireflies at the bottom of the yard.

Kurt knew that neither of them had quite learned who they were, yet. They hadn't found themselves in amongst the term papers and library stacks, nor in the space between their dorm beds where they held hands every night for the first week of freshman year to anchor each other in a sea of homesickness. They were both—especially Blaine—chasing those elusive threads of a life that seemed to be hiding around every corner, twelve steps ahead and always just vanishing out of sight.

“This is going to be awesome, right?” Blaine asked, setting his plate aside and wiping his mouth with one of the cloth napkins Kurt had brought out. Kurt took a sip of his ice water before nodding. “It's the start of something really, really great?”

“It's going to be incredible. I'm so glad we're doing this,” he replied, putting his hand over Blaine's and curling his fingers into the space above Blaine's thumb.

 

**Distance: 0.0 miles**

*

**Day 000: Sunday 16 September, 2012  
The First Step (Maine)**

_“So what's our first movie going to be?”_

_“Has to be_ Forrest Gump. Has _to be.”_

 

_“I think I can live with that. Alright, Anderson. One down, forty-nine to go.”_

Blaine stood outside the R.V., the thumb of his left hand tracing around the patterns on his pocket watch casing, the fingers of his right absently swinging the keys back and forth. It was just after sunset and the sky was somewhere between periwinkle and cobalt. The stars hadn't yet made their twinkling appearance, though Blaine doubted if they would even be visible through the thin layer of cirrostratus that had contained the late-September humidity since mid-morning.

The entire summer had been leading to this point. All the hours logged on Google Maps and Wikipedia; all the vetoes cashed in when debating movie choices; all the grease that got lodged beneath his stubby fingernails as they fixed up the R.V. outside Burt's shop. All of it done in the name of a bond that they could trace back sixteen years, to a day not dissimilar to this one.

_Blaine met his best friend in the entire world for the first time on a Saturday in late September, when he finally jumped out of the big U-Haul truck that had carted his family’s entire life all the way from Fredericksburg. It felt good to finally be outside and moving around after having to stay still for so long, so long he could barely contain himself. He felt like he was about to pop, he had so much energy._

_Once he had helped his dad take out all the little boxes and earned himself a grin and a high five, all that was left were the big pieces of furniture that only his big brother, Cooper, could help with. His mom told him to go ride his bike since they’d just unpacked it, and to go make friends with the other little boy circling the junction at the other end of the quiet street, since they were going to be neighbors and all._

_Soon enough, Blaine’s bright green bike—his first big boy bike—was drawing level with the boy’s blue one, and they rode to the end of the street with shy smiles before coming to a stop near the bright yellow fire hydrant._

_“My name's Blaine,” he said, holding out his hand like he’d seen the grown-ups do._

_“I'm Kurt,” the boy replied, firmly shaking Blaine's hand once. “Do you like singing?”_

_“I love singing! Disney's my favorite. My big brother Cooper always says I'm real good,” Blaine proclaimed proudly, and Kurt grinned._

_“I love singing, too. I sing with my Mommy every day. Maybe you can be my friend and come sing with us,” Kurt said, twisting his hands together and looking at Blaine shyly. Blaine couldn’t understand why he was so hesitant; he had super-cool clothes—his shoes matched his bow tie and everything—and the most awesome bike that even had streamers on the handlebars. Blaine totally wanted to be friends with him—all he’d ever wanted was a_ real _friend._

_“Let's be best friends!” Blaine yelled excitedly, and Kurt grinned so wide that it almost split his face right in two. Blaine couldn’t help but smile back, and he turned his bike around to face the direction they’d come. “Race you to my house!”_

Everything was mostly the same. A little rougher, a little more well-worn and weathered, a little faded and fuzzy around the edges—but the same. It was the reason Blaine had reached this itchy plateau of completion, having done all that he could here. He had hoped, in the dark and cold hours of winter night in London, that he would be able to stick it out here upon returning, but even a week after getting back and spending every waking minute with Kurt, he had known that it wasn’t enough. There were places he needed to be, though he didn't know where. All he knew was that he needed to get the hell out of Maine.

“Yes, Dad, I'm sure we have everything!”

Blaine grinned at the irritation in Kurt's voice as he exited through the front door of his cozy little house, the house in which Blaine had always felt more at home than in his own. Burt and Carole were right behind him, both wearing the same expression they had the day he and Kurt had left for Bowdoin—and college was only a couple miles from sleepy, whimsically-named Merrymeeting Road.

Kurt hugged each of them in turn—as always, Blaine noted, Carole rather more briefly than his dad—and beckoned Blaine over.

“Watch out for each other, you two,” Burt instructed, hands on both of their shoulders and his shop cap tilted back on his head. Blaine caught Kurt's eye and grinned. “I want you both home in one piece.”

“Yes, sir,” Blaine replied.

“Kid, how many times? I’ve known you sixteen years. It's ‘Burt’.”

“Old habits die hard,” Blaine said, and the familiarity of the words that so easily rolled from his tongue brought the point into startling focus—he was truly doing this. Getting out. And he was going to _miss_ these people, this tight, dysfunctional little family that he'd long been expected to call his own.

“Okay,” Burt said, sharp inhale and all business, “get outta here.”

Kurt crooked his fingers and saluted in a way that Blaine hadn't seen him do since the Unmentionable Flannel Phase, and Burt chuckled, pulling him into one last bear hug. Blaine could hear him whisper something to Kurt but couldn't discern the words, and when he stepped back, Kurt's face was noticeably flushed. Blaine had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smirking— _be safe,_ he wondered with thoughts that meandered back to a sixteen-year-old Kurt practically battering down his front door, red-faced and clutching a handful of pamphlets.

“Let's get out of here,” Kurt muttered, avoiding everyone's eyes, and turned on his heel with an awkward wave.

“You'll figure it out, sweetheart,” Carole intoned with a meaningful look that preceded a dry, tip-toed kiss to his cheek. “Just _see_ him, alright?”

“What do you mean? See who?” Blaine asked, but Carole simply shook her head and gave him a little push in the direction of the R.V., where Kurt sat waiting in the passenger seat.

“Time to go,” she said gently, and Blaine took a step back. One last look at Kurt's house, one last tentative and nervous smile back at Burt and Carole, one lasting closing of the front gate behind him, and his excitement was overwhelmingly threatening to burst out of his skin. He pulled open the door to the cab of the R.V., stepped up and swung himself into the driver's seat, taking a moment to run his hands over the textured leather steering wheel cover before pulling the door shut with a satisfying thud and fastening his seat belt.

“Stoke the fires,” Kurt said wryly, rolling down his window.

“Start the engines,” Blaine finished, and turned the key in the ignition. As he pulled away from the curb and started toward the end of the street, he continued, “She should really have a name.”

“Let's not think about it too hard. I'm sure something suitably fabulous will present itself.”

“Hey... Do you maybe want to stop by the cemetery?” Blaine asked quietly, the goodbyes ringing in his ears prompting him to wonder about just one more. Kurt shook his head vehemently as Blaine pulled the R.V. into a wide one-eighty to retrace their road on the opposite side, and they both waved to Burt and Carole where they still stood beneath the porch light, arms wrapped around one another against the slight chill that hung in the air. Blaine wondered if they would start turning it off at night now that both Kurt and Finn had flown the nest completely.

“Okay, last time. Clothes, shoes, toothbrush, hair products, skin stuff,” Blaine listed, trying to shake off the lingering vestiges of tension between them as he turned onto Minat Avenue.

“Check. Guitar, laptop, video camera, gas card and credit card even though I still don't agree with accepting your dad's guilt money…”

“Check,” Blaine replied, jaw clenched as he pushed all thoughts of his dad far into the dusty, forgotten corners of his mind. He didn't want his still-burning fury with his father to taint their first night on the road together—Baltimore was going to be bad enough. “Halloween costumes.”

Kurt laughed as he plugged Blaine's iPod into the stereo and started scrolling. “Check and _check,"_ he said in a low voice that made Blaine swivel his eyes just in time to catch Kurt's gaze raking across him before returning to the playlist. Good-naturedly, he reached across and batted at Kurt's shoulder until they were both laughing.

“All right. This is it, Hummel. Last chance to turn back.”

“Are you kidding me? Do you realize how long it took me to teach Dad how to track the GPS on my phone?”

“Just checking.”

When they merged onto I-295, joining huge freightliners taking catch of the day all over the country, Blaine reset the odometer and Kurt, having waited until then in honor of their unspoken agreement, [hit play](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/43885030035).

“Yes!” Blaine exclaimed as U2's _Vertigo_ filled the cab. “Yes. Perfect choice.”

“I know,” Kurt replied, with no hint of self-satisfaction. He was _good_ with music, Blaine had come to appreciate. The fact that he never sang—which was, occasionally, still a bone of contention between them—had refined his listening, and he supplied Blaine with a new playlist every month or so. Indie, new age, show tunes, Top 40—there was a seeming endlessness to Kurt's hunger for music, and Blaine loved that about him.

 _“Hello, hello,”_ he sang in time with the chorus as they sped south along the freeway.

_“Hola!”_

“I thought you didn't sing,” Blaine said, voice raised to carry over the music.

Kurt quirked one eyebrow at him, the patented and sardonic Hummel Arch, and rolled his eyes. “That wasn't singing.”

By the end of the song, the moment was forgotten as Blaine all but bounced in his seat, yelling in time with Bono and quite unable to keep the grin from lighting him up inside as well as out. _Is this what true freedom feels like? All asphalt, open sky and your favorite person by your side? Because,_ Blaine thought, _it can't get better than this._

When they were about twenty miles away from the campground, just exiting onto Route 1, Blaine took one hand off the steering wheel and reached underneath his seat. Kurt watched him curiously, and looked torn between dismay and anticipation when Blaine handed him two brightly wrapped packages in succession, one thin and soft, and the other small and box-shaped.

“Happy birthday,” Blaine told him sincerely, eyes flicking between Kurt and the highway ahead. “Open the big one first. You know what it is anyway.”

Carefully, Kurt pushed his fingers underneath the edge of the paper and tore it open to reveal a bright red t-shirt emblazoned with stylized text that read, 'pale is the new tan'. Kurt stared at it for a full ten seconds, muscles working in his jaw, before he burst out laughing.

Blaine's Awesome T-Shirt Tradition (or Blaine's Terrible T-Shirt Tradition, as Kurt referred to it, insisting that the alliteration was both more mellifluous and, most importantly, more accurate), had begun six years earlier, on Kurt's sixteenth birthday. Blaine had been agonizing for weeks over what to buy. Both movies and music had been out, since Kurt just downloaded everything. He’d thought about clothes or accessories, but hadn’t had the funds to cater to Kurt’s expensive tastes. And then one day, during his fourth fruitless trip to the Plaza, he had come across a street vendor selling some truly awful slogan shirts. As soon as he’d seen the black shirt hanging proudly on display, sporting a green loading bar beneath the legend 'sarcastic comment loading,' he’d pulled out his wallet.

It had been perfect, and despite the look of utter disdain that had contorted Kurt's face upon opening it, he had still worn it to sleep in that night when Blaine stayed over.

“One day, I'm going to make a quilt from all of these terrible shirts,” Kurt said, refolding the shirt in his lap with the slogan facing up. “I'll give it to my kids as proof of what a dork their Uncle Blaine is.”

“You've kept them all?” Blaine asked, surprised.

“Of course I have, silly.”

Blaine smiled, eyes back on the road as he nodded to the other gift. “Difference is that I got you something good this year, too.”

As carefully as before, Kurt unwrapped the box with slow and curious movements. Blaine chewed at his lip and actively worked at keeping his gaze trained ahead—he'd never been so nervous about giving someone a gift before, not even when he’d presented his mom with the portrait of her that he'd painted in high school for their project on Cubism. She'd loved it, and it still hung on her bedroom wall.

In his periphery, Kurt opened the slim, square box and removed the tissue paper, letting out a small gasp. “Blaine...”

“You don't have to wear it, or anything,” Blaine rushed out, words tripping over themselves. “It's just that, you know, he's the patron saint of travelers. And I know you're not religious or anything, it wasn't about that, I just—“

“Blaine, shut up,” Kurt cut across him, reaching over to squeeze his knee. The silver Saint Christopher caught the headlights of passing freightliners where it was already tangled between Kurt's fingers. “Thank you.”

“You really like it?”

“I really like it,” Kurt affirmed, letting the pendant drop and swing for a moment before taking it by the chain and putting it on, settling the small disc beneath his shirt and palming it through the fabric. “It's perfect. Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

Before long, they were pulling into the visitor parking at Hemlock Grove Campground in Arundel. Only an hour from home, and already Blaine was starting to feel like Samwise Gamgee, standing in the Shire and telling Frodo that if he took one more step, it would be the farthest from home he'd ever been. It wasn't exactly accurate, of course—he had spent his entire last year of college at King’s in London, after all— but, knowing that this was _it,_ he could understand the sentiment. This was what he'd been hungering for since he was fifteen, and while he could one day return to Maine if he wanted to, it would never be the same.

They made their way toward the site office at a comfortable, ambling pace, and Blaine reveled in the cool and beautifully fresh, woody air of the grounds. Kurt's hand rested absently just below his collar, toying with his Saint Christopher through the fabric until he came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the steps up to the office porch. Blaine paused at the top, looking back at him in question.

“Would you still have taken this trip if I hadn't come, too? Would you still have left?” Kurt asked quietly, and Blaine was entirely taken aback by the vulnerability that pulled at the corners of his mouth. The lights from inside the office spilled out through half-closed horizontal blinds, and suddenly Blaine wished there wasn't a swath of shadow falling across Kurt's eyes.

The truth was that Blaine had been waiting for this for years. Since the day the bottom dropped out of his world, mere weeks after he and Kurt had both come out to their respective families. For him, Maine represented a lot of things, and not all of them good. He needed to see so much more of the world, leave a mark of himself behind. He wanted to be something good, something great, to reach out and affect someone—even if it was just one person. Those were things he'd never admitted aloud, content to keep them close to his chest—but Kurt must have known. He _must_ have.

“I...” he trailed off, not knowing where to take the rest of the sentence. Would he really have been able to leave Kurt behind again? Would he have found the strength to go another three and a half months—probably much longer, given his lack of desire to ever set foot in Maine again—without his hurricane of a best friend, this immutable kindred spirit who could tear him apart and put him back together in a better combination? He'd never even had to think about it before; when he had first brought up the idea of the road trip, there had been no doubt in his mind that Kurt would be with him.

There were birds chirping a dusk song in the trees surrounding them, and it reminded him a little of the previous day, when he had sung _Stop & Stare_—he'd been singing it for Kurt, almost as if he’d still needed convincing.

“You don't get rid of me that easily, Hummel,” he finally said, trying for nonchalance. Kurt huffed a humorless laugh and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Blaine, be serious. What if I'd said no? Or, maybe in a year? Would I have lost you for good this time?”

“Is that why you said yes?” Blaine countered.

“You know it's not,” Kurt stated evenly, before letting out a heavy sigh and dropping his arms. “I'm sorry. It's just… It’s been a really long day, and I'm terrible with goodbyes. It got me thinking.”

“Never a good idea,” Blaine joked, and held out his hand. “Come on. We've got a fire pit and s'mores waiting.”

“Always with the damn s'mores,” Kurt muttered, climbing the steps and taking Blaine's hand in a fleeting squeeze.

When the young clerk with yawning eyes had signed them in and assigned them site 69—much to Kurt's amusement—they made the short drive around the winding track that ran through the park and pulled into their space with a renewed buzz about them. Blaine left Kurt pulling supplies from the fridge to go out to the fire pit, though it became abundantly clear when he got outside that a campfire was not in the cards. Everything was still too damp from the previous day’s rain, and he was still standing forlornly by the pit when Kurt stepped out of the R.V., arms laden with a cooler and plates.

“You're quite the Boy Scout, I see,” Kurt quipped, bending down and making a show of warming his hands over the non-existent flames.

“Should've gotten you another sarcasm shirt,” Blaine grumbled. “It's too damp; I don't think this is gonna happen tonight. Next stop?”

“Next stop,” Kurt agreed, stretching his arms and rolling his wrists. “I'm tired anyway, and we have a movie to watch.”

Blaine gathered up the bag and plates, following Kurt back inside with only a passing, dejected glance at the fire pit.

Fifteen minutes later, they were both sitting on the bed, on top of the covers in t-shirts and shorts, sucking the color from slices of honeydew melon while Kurt loaded up the movie on Blaine’s laptop.

“It's no campfire, but it's pretty damn perfect,” Kurt murmured, chasing a trail of juice down his wrist with his tongue and reaching for another slice after he hit play.

They watched in silence for a time, as the feather curled its way down to where Forrest sat on the bus bench.

“I wouldn't have,” Blaine said quietly, just as Forrest finished the classic, timeless line about life being like a box of chocolates. Kurt questioned him with a single look. “I wouldn't have left without you.”

Kurt smiled, then, and curled his fingers around Blaine's again in the way that somehow only felt right when he did it, and Blaine leaned sideways to rest his head on Kurt's shoulder, settling in for the duration.

 

**Distance: 50.6 miles**

*

**Day 001: Monday 17 September, 2012  
Old Ground, New Ground (New Hampshire)**

_“Come on, Blaine. How many times did you demand that your parents take you to see it at the movies? I’ve heard you quote it in everyday conversation.”_

_“Alright, fine. You win. I guess it’s a classic, after all.”_

_“You can never go wrong with Robin Williams getting sucked into a board game.”_

 

The next morning, after he had awoken to Blaine moving quietly around the bedroom as he got dressed for a run, Kurt retrieved his yoga mat from the narrow closet and set it out in front of the couch. With his [favorite feel-good playlist](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/43885180810) floating through the speakers of the iPod dock, he warmed up gradually, easing into the familiar stretches of his favored routine. He tried to clear his mind and sink into the peace of repetitive extended breathing, but Blaine’s affirmation the previous night still weighed heavily on him, calling up memories that he’d been examining for the better part of the last three months: Blaine bowing to his grandfather’s coffin one last time; Kurt’s fingers rubbing back and forth in the crook of Blaine’s elbow as they left the church; the words Blaine had said as they sat with their backs to the trunk of the cherry tree in Blaine’s back yard, ties loosened and shirt sleeves rolled up in an attempt to combat the mid-afternoon June heat.

_“Let’s go somewhere. No, wait, let’s go everywhere. He left me the R.V., so let’s use it. Take a road trip with me.”_

Kurt, who had been systematically shredding a still-damp tissue in his lap, had barely been surprised by the suggestion. Blaine was always looking for a place to call home—he’d spent their last year of college across the Atlantic interning under Oscar-winning director Dmitri Serafino, in fact— but that he’d come up with the idea a mere six days after his return to Maine had thrown Kurt for a loop, so much so that he had found himself agreeing with barely a thought.

And now, here he was on his last morning in Maine, waiting for Blaine to return and provide an arrow to his compass. As he transitioned from a standing half forward bend into a firefly pose, the exertion causing sweat to bead at his temples, Kurt wondered if it was a smart decision to put so much of his stock into Blaine’s nomadic hands. Maybe there was some part of him that still needed convincing after all, never mind that they were already almost past the point of no return.

 _No,_ he thought, exhaling to a count of five. _No, I’m here, and I’m doing this._

He moved smoothly back into standing half forward before switching through to downward-facing dog, relaxing into the stretch in his back and thighs. He’d forgotten how much he enjoyed this—he’d been too busy enjoying the benefits of his own flexibility instead.

“Well, that’s quite a view.”

Kurt twisted to the side, looking back past his own legs at where Blaine stood just inside the door, curls sticking damply to his forehead and the front of his heather gray Bowdoin tee dark with sweat. Kurt hummed non-committally, but wiggled his ass from side to side all the same. “I work hard for this ass.”

“I know you do,” Blaine said as he edged past, Kurt sinking and pulling back into upward-facing dog. “But you’re really working out to Bowie?”

“I’ll have you know that this song is a classic, and Bowie is one of the true artists of our time.”

“Our parents’ time, maybe,” Blaine replied, leaning against the unit below the sink and draining the remaining contents of his blue Camelbak. “Since when did you start doing yoga again, anyway?”

“It was a slow summer,” Kurt said, releasing the pose and moving to stand—he’d been almost finished, and the quiet was broken.

“Didn’t look that slow the day I got back from London,” Blaine quipped, and Kurt glared through the rising heat in his cheeks, incensed at how efficiently Blaine could make him blush.

“I think you mean the day you started cramping my style again,” he shot back, and bent to retrieve his mat from the floor.

“Come on, Kurt. You must already have been pretty hard up if you finally gave in to Pick-Up Line Guy,” Blaine continued, stretching his arms out over his head with a satisfied smirk. Kurt paused halfway through rolling up the mat, watching the muscles shift beneath Blaine’s skin, and he felt it all over again: the tug, tug, tug of dull want that had been lying mostly dormant somewhere in the bottom of his gut ever since the day Blaine had come home, broader and better defined and more worldly. Every single day since, Kurt had been asking himself how one person could change so much in the space of a year. “What was it that finally did it for you? Was it the library card one?”

“Blaine—“

“What about, ‘People call me Chandler, but you can call me Tonight’?”

“Blaine, we’ve had this conversation a million times already. Can you just drop it?” Kurt asked hotly, tucking his mat under his arm. Really, it was just that Chandler had happened to be at the same Pride parade and the same post-parade party as Kurt had been, and somehow dancing had morphed into staying out all night, into breakfast at Brunswick Diner, into finding themselves stretched out on Kurt’s bed as early-morning summer sun filtered through the drapes. “It’s not like I got to finish the job anyway, what with you barging in on us.”

“Hand or blow?”

“Do you know the difference, or should I draw you a diagram? Though, you know, practical demonstrations are always fun. And if I’m as ‘hard up’ as you say…”

Blaine finally raised his hands in surrender, acquiescing, “Fine, fine, you win!”

“Good,” Kurt said, nodding. “Now go take a shower; I can smell you from here.”

Blaine saluted him with a wink, and soon enough Kurt was left alone in the living area, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth as Blaine’s voice singing _Golden Years_ carried over the shower.

 

It was noon before they drove into Hampton, and Kurt had been watching the shadows grow longer and darker ahead of the R.V. as the sun shone ever brighter. The windows were rolled down, the fuzzy black dice hung from the mirror swinging back and forth in the cool breeze that whipped through the cab, and Kurt reclined in his seat, one hand on the steering wheel and his elbow resting in the window frame. Blaine’s seat was tipped as far back as it would go, his crossed ankles resting on the dashboard, and he hummed quietly along to the radio.

Kurt’s lips curved into an involuntary and easy smile as he ran his fingers back through his hair, shaded eyes flicking towards the GPS even though they’d taken enough trips as kids to Hampton beach that he could have driven the route in his sleep. It felt good to finally be out of Maine; until they’d crossed the state line, it had felt like he was simply gone for the evening, visiting friends in the next town over. His lingering apprehension notwithstanding, he had to admit that finally leaving home behind for a while was probably going to be a good thing—he was twenty-two years old now, and a college graduate wanting to work in the film industry. He would always have needed to relocate.

“We’re almost there,” Blaine said absently, twisting to drop his feet to the floor and pulling his seat upright before reaching into the spacious glove compartment to retrieve Kurt’s folder. “Everything’s in state order, right?”

“Are you questioning my organizational skills?”

“Never,” Blaine answered with a light chuckle, flipping past the first few pages of the thick blue folder that Kurt had stuffed full with print-outs and reservations, until he found the one for their two-day spot on the waterfront at Hampton Beach State Park. “I can’t believe it’s been so long since we were last here. Remember? With those ridiculous sandwiches you made?”

“That was a good day,” Kurt said fondly, nodding even as he recalled his disastrous first attempt at croque-monsieur. “Seven years, though.”

“I know; it’s insane. That was the day before, right?”

“The day before what?”

Blaine rolled his eyes and turned in his seat, folder splayed across his lap. “The day before we came out to each other. You know, when we almost made out before we remembered that it’d be totally weird?”

“Totally weird,” Kurt agreed automatically, pushing his sunglasses back up his nose and returning both hands to the steering wheel. He could feel Blaine’s eyes on him as he did so, and he couldn’t help but shift in his seat. It was one of their many unwritten rules that they didn’t bring up the one time that they had almost kissed; it really was just too weird to think about, and if Kurt was one hundred percent honest with himself, the more he thought about it, the more he would begin envisioning the lines blurring between them. It was safer for both his sanity and his sex drive that he didn’t dwell on it too long. Despite all of his protests to April, he spent enough time surreptitiously checking out his best friend as it was. He cleared his throat, and unnecessarily asked, “The paperwork’s all there, right?”

“Looks like,” Blaine replied, pulling the sheet of paper from its plastic pocket and scanning it as Kurt continued guiding the R.V. along Ocean Boulevard. “Meet you down there?”

“Sure.”

A few minutes later, Blaine was closing the passenger side door to the cab behind him, and Kurt eyed the camcorder he’d left on his seat for a moment before pulling back out onto the main road. There was an [old Stereophonics song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/43885489338) playing on the radio—not so old as to be considered part of their “old stuff” but old enough—and, fleetingly, Kurt opened his mouth to sing along. As soon as he did so, his throat constricted and it felt as if his tongue had swollen to twice its size, lying thick and useless in his mouth—just as it did every time he tried to sing outside of his room on a day where the house was empty. He shook himself, stuffing memories of singing The Dishes Song with Mom back into a box and taping it haphazardly shut. He set his jaw, flexed his fingers around the steering wheel, and drove on.

Being a mid-September Monday, the R.V. park was all but deserted, and an air of tranquility accompanied the never-silent beach quiet as he pulled into their reserved site and cut the engine, sinking back into his seat and breathing in the familiar scent of Hampton beach saltwater. The first lungful uncoupled with the smell of Bois de Voilette always made him ache, the hollow cut deep into his chest growing infinitesimally wider for a second that never failed to feel like falling, and he found himself rubbing the dip at the base of his neck absently, the chain of his Saint Christopher catching on his fingertips. He pulled it from where it lay beneath the collar of his fitted, short-sleeved black shirt and studied it closely, resting the disc in his palm so that it could catch the light of the lunchtime sun. The design was simple: a smooth silver circle bordering an engraving of a man with a walking stick carrying a child on his back, nothing outwardly religious about it.

Kurt felt ashamed for having been so surprised at receiving such a thoughtful gift from Blaine; over the course of their year apart, the number of little things Blaine would do for him had been assimilated into Kurt’s own life, and by the time Blaine returned, Kurt had begun to take for granted the independence and self-reliance he had made great efforts to carve out for himself. After the first three months of barely-returned Skype calls, and emails that went unanswered for days—and though it wasn’t exactly conducive to keeping his best friend close, even when said friend was three thousand miles away and busy almost eighteen hours a day—Kurt’s sense of self-preservation had kicked in and he had simply learned how to be alone without being lonely.

And then Blaine had come home, sadness over the reason for his return weighing on him like a boulder and the very slightest of London affectations in his voice. He had come home, and suddenly there was Aztec couscous, and a blanket covering him when he started awake at 2 a.m., having fallen asleep halfway through the movie they had been watching, and the DVDs on his shelf that he’d been meaning to get to were back in alphabetical order. Kurt had barely known what to do with himself, struck dumb with the fear that he needed Blaine much more than he’d ever thought before their symbiotic relationship had been stripped away from him.

With a sigh, he tucked the pendant beneath his collar once more, unbuckled his seatbelt, and grabbed the camcorder from the passenger seat. Blaine’s laptop was hibernating on the diner-style table at the far end of the couch, and as Kurt seated himself on one of the high-backed, flock-print chairs, he connected the camcorder up using the USB cable that was still plugged into the laptop from the previous night’s charging.

The footage that Blaine had been taking out of the window was sparse, clips here and there of passing cars and scenery rushing by, with music omnipresent in the background and snatches of idle drive-time conversation. Kurt transferred it all to the hard drive and wiped the camcorder’s SD card. He and Blaine had plans for the footage they collected, plans that involved the final result of a documentary movie that would net them an Academy Award, though they hadn’t yet figured out the point of the documentary itself. Details.

Logging into the park’s free Wi-Fi network, the signal strong even from the oceanfront pavilion where his parents’ wedding had taken place, Kurt opened a new incognito window and visited his blog. Beneath the legend _100 Days of Kurt Hummel_ were only two entries; a short placeholder entry, and the text entry he had made the morning of his birthday. He’d promised himself no looking back, and so he didn’t waste any time re-reading what he’d written, simply clicked through for a new video post, choosing the instant capture option. It was about a five-minute walk from the site office to their where he’d parked; he had time.

“It’s day one, and we’ve just arrived in Hampton,” Kurt began brightly, looking directly into the laptop’s tiny but powerful webcam. “The sky’s blue and the sun’s high, which can mean only two things: two days on the beach, and lots of sunblock.”

Kurt paused momentarily, gaze faltering and slipping to the mirror image of himself on the screen, and he reminded himself that, other than whatever followers he may pick up along the way, this blog was completely private. No one knew about it, not even April. It was his space to document his thoughts and feelings, something that he could call entirely his own. In light of the comeback his sense of codependence had made, he needed something that was just his, and this blog was it.

“Leaving home last night was… It was hard. Not just the goodbye part—I always knew that that part would suck—but knowing whether I was really doing the right thing. I think when we got to Arundel and I brought it up, Blaine realized how much he was asking of me to just take off with him. Don’t get me wrong, I’m… I’m thrilled that we’re doing this together. I am. But this isn’t just some day trip to Vermont or even a week’s vacation to the west coast. This is three months of nothing but the road and each other, and I’m a little bit terrified that home won’t ever feel like home again. And a little bit more terrified that it’ll feel too much like home and I’ll never want to leave.

“Despite all that, though, I really am glad to be here. I mean, this place just has so many memories for the both of us. We both have family history here, and so many weekends spent down here since we were just kids, building sandcastles with seaweed-fortified battlements, right up ‘til just before Blaine left for London. It’s one of our places, and nowhere else would have felt right.”

Kurt smiled in spite of himself, almost feeling like he should be lying on a leather couch. He didn’t lay himself bare like this for anyone—except perhaps Blaine—and knowing that this video diary was just for him… There was an odd sense of freedom in it.

He knew he had to cut his stream of consciousness short, however, when he happened to glance through the windshield and saw Blaine approaching. Turning back to the screen, he said, “Well, better get going. The water waits for no man.”

“Who’re you talking to?” Blaine asked, stepping up into the R.V. and pushing his sunglasses up on top of his head, regarding Kurt with a curious look.

“No one, just… Thinking out loud,” Kurt replied, tilting the laptop lid downward after closing the browser when he saw the upload confirmation.

“Anything interesting?”

“Always.”

Blaine chuckled, and dropped the paperwork he was holding onto the passenger seat. “So, I figure we can take the laptop to the beach with us and watch our movie. And god, I’m so hungry. I passed, like, thirty restaurants on the way here and everything smelled fantastic. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah, actually,” Kurt said, his stomach grumbling quietly at the mention of food. He slid out of the booth and stood, the prospect of getting out of the R.V. and stretching his legs a happy one. “What are you in the mood for?”

“I was thinking Ocean Wok, since it’s close. The calamari…”

Kurt groaned aloud, mouth already beginning to water. “Excellent choice.”

“Or, you know, we could head up to the Urchin. See if they’ve added anything new to the menu lately,” Blaine continued in a mischievous tone, and Kurt didn’t miss the gleam of a tease in his eyes.

“Blaine, no. _Anything_ but croque-monsieur.”

 

**Distance: 95.6 miles**

*

**Day 004: Thursday 20 September, 2012  
A Curious Kind of Closeness (Vermont)**

_“Kurt, seriously? You’ve_ never _seen_ Beetlejuice?"

_“…No?”_

_“Okay. We’re watching_ Beetlejuice, _and because it’s Tim Burton, you’re not allowed a veto.”_

 

The farther away from Maine they drove, the more Blaine felt a sense of dust settling around him. Granted, there was only actually one state between them and the place he’d called home, but being on the road was freeing in a way he hadn’t quite expected. He’d been able to make something of a home in London, but the living situation had been sticky for a while, having to get used to the quirks of roommates that were all the polar opposite of Kurt. Since the day his dad had left seven years earlier, Blaine had simply felt adrift and anchorless, no matter the lengths he went to in order to find that elusive sense of belonging he only ever felt around his best friend. There were no good first impressions to make, no façades to keep up, no pretenses or misconceptions. It was easy, and no matter the distance that stretched ahead of them with its miles of untapped potential, he felt a descending peacefulness.

Yet he couldn’t sleep.

Trying not to toss and turn too much lest he wake Kurt, who was stretched out next to him in the recovery position, he had been counting sheep for nearly an hour. They had only gotten halfway through the movie before Kurt’s yawns had grown so frequent that his eyes had begun to water, and had decided to just go to sleep.

“I know it’s your turn, but unless you’re planning on carrying me out there, the idea of me moving right now is pretty much a non-starter,” Kurt had said as he sank back against the pillows, one arm thrown over his eyes. Blaine had simply laughed, prodded him in the ribs, and taken his laptop out to the living area. By the time he had returned, Kurt’s breathing had slowed and deepened. Blaine had watched him from the doorway for a long moment, biting his lip with the indecision, before caving and crawling beneath the covers, turning onto his front and burying his arms beneath the pillow.

He had thought about their two days in Vermont: the giddy excitement he had felt at finally getting to visit the Ben & Jerry’s factory like he’d never been allowed on family trips growing up; the way Kurt had bounced on the balls of his feet when they’d walked past a sign for Apple-y Ever After and when Blaine had suggested they split a hot fudge sundae in the scoop shop; the beautiful and history-rich art at Shelburne Museum; the long walk they had taken up to the Waterbury dam and back, debating shooting with film versus digital—contrary to his technology-savvy, early adopter nature, Kurt was a staunch advocate of the classic art of film, whereas Blaine had always preferred the level of detail that could be achieved with digital. It was one thing that they could never agree on, but for which they would one day have to find a compromise if they ever wanted to work together.

The clock beneath the wall-mounted TV at the end of the bed read 2:37 a.m., and Blaine sighed quietly, finally giving in and getting out of bed with slow, careful movements. Sliding the bedroom door shut behind him, he padded out into the living area and collapsed onto the couch, wincing at the cold leather against the backs of his thighs, bare save for his boxer shorts. Squinting against the sudden burst of light as he called his laptop out of hibernation, he reached up to switch on one of the spotlights over the couch, deciding that it was probably time to update his blog.

He had started it on a whim, signing up the day before the gig at The Cannery, and sent the link to a few friends in London with whom he had been exchanging semi-regular emails since being back stateside. He knew he’d be lucky to even get a reliable Wi-Fi connection every day, and he was a damn good pen pal—short, phone-typed responses simply wouldn’t do, so he figured that a blog would be a decent substitute. He uploaded pictures and small video clips using his phone app every day, but it had taken until now for him to find a window of time large enough to sit and order his thoughts enough to write about them.

 _Greetings from Little River State Park, Waterbury, VT,_ he wrote once he had signed into the park’s network. _I’m a little afraid that all this excitement is already proving too much for me, since it’s nearly 3 a.m. and, to quote the artist, I can’t get no sleep._

_Things so far are great—the road really is a fantastic place to be, especially when you’ve got a kick-ass playlist that includes plenty of Pink. Kurt and I (see, Lucy, I can use proper grammar outside of merry England!) have had a fairly chilled-out trip so far, hanging out at Hampton Beach and doing a few things around Vermont we’ve both wanted to do for years but never had the chance. I’m sure we both looked right at home with the rest of the kids on our tour of the Ben & Jerry’s factory, all wide eyes, gasps and giggles. It’s a wonder we didn’t start whispering behind our hands or, God forbid, passing notes._

_If any of you guys ever get the chance—though, really, why you’d choose Vermont out of all the places in the U.S. you could visit would be something of a mystery—I’d definitely recommend checking out Shelburne museum if only for the folk art collection. The level of detail and craftsmanship in some of the pieces there is truly breathtaking, particularly the Fire Engine weather vane. I completely geeked out over it and I don’t even care._

_I’ll keep this short so as not to bore you too much, though rest assured that you’ll probably wind up sick of the sight of Boston, Salem, and Provincetown over the next three days—we’re heading for Massachusetts tomorrow morning (it’s not tomorrow until you’ve slept)._

_Hoping you’re all well and not too rain-miserable (did I mention that we’re having some really beautiful weather here?)._

After a quick read-through for any glaring grammatical errors—Lucy would tear him a new one if she found him slipping back into old ways just because he was back in the States—he hit Publish, closed the tab, and sat back on the couch.

“Why are you awake right now? It’s ridiculous o’clock,” Kurt’s voice, gravelly and sleep-rough, came from the now open bedroom doorway.

“Old man,” Blaine teased him, running a hand through his mussed curls as he took in Kurt’s messy hair, bleary eyes, and the soft blanket wrapped around him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“Kurt, you’re scary enough when you wake up in the morning, let alone in the middle of the night,” Blaine said, dropping his head to the back of the couch, and Kurt sleepily raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m serious! You’re legitimately terrifying. You open your eyes and all I can see is fire, pitchforks and death.”

“Cute,” Kurt huffed. He shuffled slowly towards him and collapsed onto the couch, leaning over the center arm and dropping his head against Blaine’s shoulder. Flicking his eyes toward the computer to make sure that he actually had closed out of his blog—something he couldn’t quite put his finger on had made him keep it a secret from Kurt, from everyone apart from his friends in London, actually—he closed the lid and shifted downward, Kurt’s forehead pressing warmly against the skin of his neck. Kurt cleared his throat. “Did you want to finish the movie? Or… I could make some warm milk.”

Blaine wrinkled his nose. “Warm milk? We’re not kids anymore, Kurt.”

“Shut up; you know it’s delicious,” Kurt protested, sitting up and arching his back, the pale expanse of his neck fully exposed as he tipped his head.

Blaine swallowed thickly, flashes of Kurt’s now daily yoga routine rushing unbidden to the forefront of his mind. Something between them had changed since he had come back from London, the subtlest of shifts in their dynamic that had somehow given everything a humming undercurrent of a feeling he couldn’t pin down. Mostly, he chalked it up to the fact that they were simply settling back into being them after spending a year apart, but the longer it wore on, the more he wondered if there was more to it.

The moment passed when Kurt added with a wicked grin, “And growing boys need their calcium.”

“Not a growing boy,” Blaine grumbled both indignantly and regretfully. Kurt simply swatted at his thigh and moved over to the R.V.’s narrow electric stove, retrieving ingredients and a small pan from the cupboard above. He paused in front of the fridge as he went to get the milk, shaking his head and chuckling despite himself at Blaine’s—genius, in his opinion—reworked Jumanji quote using the refrigerator magnets: _In the jungle you must wait, until your turn to masturbate._

“So did you want to finish the movie?” Kurt asked a few minutes later, rolling his neck from side to side as he stirred vanilla and nutmeg into the pan.

“Sure,” Blaine answered, pulling the laptop back toward him and opening VLC. “But how and when did you manage to stock the cupboards so full? I didn’t see you bringing in any of that stuff.”

“I’m a stealth ninja and you’ll never learn my secrets, Anderson,” Kurt replied smoothly, shooting him the patented Hummel Eyebrow Arch—and Blaine knew much better than to argue with that.

He couldn’t deny, upon tasting the first sip of warm milk he’d had in years, that it was indeed delicious. Kurt quickly rinsed the pan and spoon he’d used before returning to the couch, wrapping himself up in his blanket and dropping his head to Blaine’s shoulder once more. Blaine skipped back a couple of scenes, to where Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder were arguing in their gaudily-decorated kitchen, and drank deeply from his mug after pressing play.

A few seconds later, Kurt reached up and quickly swiped his thumb across the skin above Blaine’s top lip, then pulled it back and sucked it into his mouth, all without taking his eyes off the screen. Blaine froze for a moment, trying to reconcile being at once confused and oddly turned on.

“What was that?”

“Milk mustache,” Kurt said simply. “You always get them.”

Blaine couldn’t quite relax after that, the remainder of the movie washing through him as he tried not to think too much about the warmth he could feel from Kurt even through the blanket separating them—he wasn’t about to let a little sleep deprivation make a creep out of him. That’s all it was, after all—it was a little too early in the trip to be calling it cabin fever—and it wasn’t long before he was resting his head atop Kurt’s, determinedly focusing back on the movie and not the softness of Kurt’s thick hair against his cheek.

It was just Kurt, for God’s sake.

 

**Distance: 347.8 miles**

*

**Day 007: Sunday 23 September, 2012  
A Hand Unheld (Massachusetts)**

_“But it’s_ Jaws. _It made history!”_

_“Unless you want me clinging to you like some sort of barnacle, veto.”_

_“Alright, fine._ Mona Lisa Smile _it is.”_

 

 **Kurt (11:21am)** – IMG_20122209_4976.jpg  
 **April (11:23am)** – Rude. Where are you guys and why do you both look so attractive right now? I’m still in my sweats.  
 **Kurt (11:24am)** – That was yesterday, walking along Charles River in Boston. Massachusetts is beautiful! And hey, you deserve a lazy day. I saw the video from last night, you guys were fantastic!  
 **April (11:25am)** – Are you kidding me? It was fucking ridiculous. Damn Hugh and his obsession with obscure British indie bands.  
 **Kurt (11:26am)** – For what it’s worth, you sounded great. Will you guys be in Boston at all?  
 **April (11:26am)** – Jen’s trying to get us a gig at some bar in the North End. Why?  
 **Kurt (11:27am)** – Make sure you go to Mike’s Pastry for cannolis. But for the love of god, hide the fucking box when you’re out.  
 **April (11:30am)** – …am I just supposed to guess why?  
 **Kurt (11:30am)** – Just trust me.

Blaine’s eyes had been fleetingly coming to rest on Kurt at intervals since the previous day by the river, and Kurt wished more than anything as he turned his gaze out of the window for the umpteenth time that he could narrow his field of vision to nothing but the asphalt ahead of them and simply not notice.

But he couldn’t do that any more than he could forget Blaine’s stupid, throwaway comment. It was nothing, and Kurt _felt_ stupid for being so fixated on it, and what he needed most was not to be shown a living, breathing reflection of what he saw every time he looked in the mirror: a kid playing dress-up in an old man’s skin, a faintly haunted look in his eyes that spoke of too many things never dealt with, regarding himself with pity as he arranged his armor. And with pity was exactly how Blaine was looking at him.

_“You sound like your mother, you know,” Kurt said fondly, in response to Blaine using an old phrase of his mom’s._

_“It’s getting worse,” Blaine admitted somewhat sheepishly. “I guess there’s something to that old saying, after all.”_

_“That we’re destined to become our parents?”_

_“That we’re destined to become our mothers.”_

And just like that, Kurt had stiffened, the tension setting his spine arrow-straight quicker than the crack of a whip, and his head had spun from how quickly he had been suddenly eight years old all over again, the light from Blaine’s living room spilling out into the hallway, a yellow rectangle framing his dad as he had knelt down in front of Kurt and taken his shoulders. His grip on the blue and white string around his pastry box had tightened until it cut into the creases of his fingers, and he had closed his eyes, inhaling slowly.

“I swear to god, I want to shoot everywhere in this state,” Kurt said, pocketing his phone and settling back into his seat his left leg crossed over his right. He picked up the camcorder from the dash, the plastic casing warm from where the midday sun was bearing oppressively down upon the R.V., and flipped out the screen to go through some of Blaine’s footage from the previous day. He had to do something to break the tension.

“It certainly has something,” Blaine agreed, and Kurt scrolled back through the footage until he found the panoramic view of Charles River that Blaine had taken from their vantage point by Harvard Bridge. Even with such a state-of-the-art camcorder, there was no capturing the full magic of the blue-backed skyline and the sun sparkling out over the water—it was breathtaking, cinematic, a place where anything could happen. A place where he wanted to _make_ things happen. The location was a cinematographer’s dream.

“Doesn’t it? I feel like I’ve had this blank canvas put in front of me. I don’t know why they don’t use this place more, there’s so much untapped potential.”

“I can see you there. Back in Boston,” Blaine said lightly, absently tapping his fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of _[Bittersweet Symphony](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44019185733)_ pouring through the speakers.

“You can?” Kurt asked, trying for nonchalance.

“You suit cities; that’s all I’m saying. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the Philadelphia trip.”

“I thought we agreed never to talk about the Philadelphia trip.”

“Well, you know, before the whole public indecency thing… I’ve never really seen you like that. It was like you came alive; I don’t know how else to put it. And here even more so. You’re all color.”

Kurt chuckled and shook his head, trying not to notice the way his lips seemed to strain to keep hold of the smile when Blaine’s eyes caught his across the center console, and the mirth faded back into that same hesitant, considering look.

“Kurt, about yesterday… I wasn’t—“ Blaine began, his voice holding the same regretful tone as it had the day before, right up until he’d been interrupted by two petite brunettes, holding hands and glancing at the Mike’s Pastry boxes he and Kurt had been carrying, the ones that contained the second halves of the cannolis they’d been unable to finish in one sitting. The girls—tourists, there for the weekend from London—had easily been the twelfth or thirteenth time he and Blaine had been stopped and asked for directions, even as far away as they were, and while Kurt was busy trying to keep himself from screaming, Blaine had directed them to the nearest train station, telling them to get off the T at Haymarket and head to Hanover Street.

“Blaine, it’s fine. Really,” Kurt said, cutting him off and reaching over to cover Blaine’s hand with his own. He shot him a tight smile, wishing and hoping and praying that Blaine would just let it go, file it under the list of things that Kurt didn’t want to talk about, and move on.

Blaine returned his eyes to the road, nodded after a brief pause, and as he began turning off the freeway, said, “okay.”

A few quiet minutes later, they were parked in the small beach parking lot behind Devon’s on Commercial Street in Provincetown, the scent and sound of the ocean waves chasing after them as they made their way around to the front of the restaurant. Kurt took in the weathered white siding of the building next door, the paint no doubt battered from the wood by the salty sea air. A few couples were seated outside beneath the black awning, and Kurt couldn’t help but let his eyes linger a fraction too long on two boys sharing a stack of blueberry pancakes, proudly holding hands across the table. When one of them looked up at him over his boyfriend’s shoulder as Kurt and Blaine passed, strands of red hair falling over his eyes, Kurt offered him a small smile and continued on inside.

“Did you see the two boys holding hands out front?” he asked Blaine, when enough silence—save for the [old Donavon Frankenreiter song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44019313677) playing inside the restaurant—had passed since placing their orders that it began to feel uncomfortable, like Blaine was just itching to bring it all back up again so that he could try to fix it or something equally as frustrating.

“Adorable, right?” Blaine answered, sliding his hand palm-up across the tablecloth and waggling his fingers.

“I’m not holding hands with you,” Kurt said, pulling his napkin from the table and setting it across his lap simply to give his hands something to do other than give in to the urge to grab onto Blaine and hold tight. He took a small sip of his iced tea, hoping that the cold would help clear his mind, because this was beginning to prove problematic—it was _Blaine,_ for Christ’s sake. Blaine, his best friend of sixteen years and emphatically nothing more—feelings never led anywhere good, and as Blaine himself always said, sex just complicated things. Though when Kurt started putting ‘Blaine’ and ‘sex’ in the same train of thought, he didn’t know.

“Aw, Kurt,” Blaine whined, giving Kurt his best wounded puppy expression. Kurt turned his eyes upward, concentrating on the exposed white beams of the ceiling and the checked, cylindrical light fixtures suspended over the tables. “Come on, everyone else is doing it.”

“Those are the exact words you said to me in Philly, and look how that turned out,” Kurt said archly, glancing around at the other patrons. Granted, there were a smattering of couples, straight and gay, throughout the busy restaurant who were holding hands, but they didn’t exactly form a majority. “And besides, not _everyone_ else is doing it.”

“But they could if they wanted, and isn’t that the point?”

“Can we just talk about how you’ve already started making plans to retire here, instead? Because I saw the look on your face down by the beach.”

Finally withdrawing his hand with a sigh, Blaine shifted his gaze from side to side and fiddled with his fork. “Not true.”

 _“So_ true, Blaine Anderson. Come on, you don’t think about what it’s going to be like to be old?”

“All the time.”

“I knew it.”

“I think it’s going to be fantastic. Who really wants to be forever young?”

“Ask an old person.”

Blaine snorted. “I guess. But picture it, Kurt—a lighthouse down by the beach, a little artist’s colony…”

“Sounds pretty perfect,” Kurt said, “and just like you.”

“Well, you’ll be there too, right? Someone needs to be in charge of exhibitions, because my organizational skills are for shit.”

Kurt laughed, his first genuine laugh since the day before, and felt himself relax back into his seat, the residual tension draining from the top down, until he could feel it soaking through the bottoms of his shoes and down into the floor to dissipate completely. “Of course I’ll be there. Someone has to bring the fabulous,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially for a moment.

“Eggs benedict?”

Kurt glanced up at the waitress he hadn’t even noticed approaching and nodded—the smell of hollandaise sauce intermingling with applewood smoked bacon was heavenly, and he swallowed thickly as his mouth began to water. He hadn’t realized quite how hungry he was until the food was placed in front of him, and suddenly he felt ravenous.

“So what’s the plan for tonight?” Blaine asked, tearing off a small piece of his French toast with his fork after the waitress had discreetly slipped their bill onto the table and excused herself.

“Go to the site, watch our movie, get ready, and then head to A-House,” Kurt answered succinctly.

“Ah, so _that's_ the real reason you brought the leather,” Blaine teased. “The Halloween costume was just a convenient cover.”

“The place has _three_ bars, Blaine. And if you don’t watch it, I might have to tie you up and leave you there for the bears to feast on.”

“But…” Blaine trailed off with a look of faux-puzzlement. “How did you know I like that?”

Kurt just laughed, shook his head, and took another bite of his eggs. Despite the little moments of temptation, the curiosity to see what it would be like, Blaine was still just Blaine. Dorky, charming, affable Blaine: his best friend and nothing more.

 

**Distance: 683.8 miles**

*

**Day 009: Tuesday 25 September, 2012  
Melody in Flames (Rhode Island)**

“Meet Joe Black. _I know it’s a little long, but—“_

 _“It’s three hours, Kurt. The only other movies that long that I’ve been able to sit still for are_ Titanic _and the_ Lord of the Rings _movies.”_

_“Trust me, Blaine. It’s so worth it.”_

 

Something had changed.

It had been a little over a week since they had left Brunswick, and Blaine could already feel the shift that was taking place. Something he couldn’t put a name to had burrowed beneath the layers of his skin and taken root, was spreading outward, and the longer he tried to follow the thread back, the more lost in his own history with Kurt he became.

An intelligent person might have said it started the day he caught Kurt with Chandler, saw the way his head was thrown back against the pillows as Chandler mouthed his way down the broad planes of Kurt’s chest. It was a flashbulb, burned bright into his mind’s eye as if he’d been staring at a lamp for too long, the impression of it blurring before his eyes as his gaze slid sideways. An intelligent person might have said that the reason he wanted Kurt to take his arm or his hand as they walked down the street was a sign that he wanted more from Kurt than just his friendship, that he shouldn’t fight something that felt about as natural as taking breath. An intelligent person might have said that it was the push he needed to finally see this man differently, open his eyes to the Kurt-shaped figure that had been in front of him for years, only he’d been staring at the sun too long to take note.

Blaine decided that it was just a sex thing. And that was fine. He could put the sex out of his mind, because sex only ever complicated things. He didn’t even need to have _had_ it—aside from those two fumbling encounters back in London—to know that. Just look at what happened to his parents when his father had decided that his mother wasn’t enough for him anymore, that none of them were.

No, what he and Kurt had was special, sacred, the kind of friendship that just didn’t come along every day, and both of them worked hard to keep it exactly what it was.

So why did he feel that this thing, whatever it was, that had begun to simmer in his gut was only the beginning?

“Blaine.”

“Hmm?”

“Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?” Kurt asked exasperatedly, burying his hands in his jacket pockets as they continued their ambling pace around downtown Providence, walking through City Hall Park towards the river.

“Sorry, I was just…” Blaine trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence. He shook his head. “What were you saying?”

“I was _saying_ that there are all these movies where Death appears as a person, an entity, but what about Life?” Kurt asked. “Where are the stories where Life appears and coaxes someone back from the edge, or wakes someone up to all of the possibilities that it has to offer?”

Blaine considered the notion for a moment. “I think that’s kind of our job, you know? We’re the ones who’re living, who’re supposed to seize the day, and do all of it in the face of everything else.”

“Hmm. Maybe you’re right,” Kurt conceded. “Did you like it? You didn’t really say anything when it was over.”

“Yeah, it was great. A little slow in parts, but I felt like that was kind of necessary, you know?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Kurt agreed. “It didn’t really get to that point where the story got diluted by the length, either.”

“I mean, I felt like they could have wrapped it up in maybe two-and-a-half hours tops, if some of the actors hadn’t taken so long to deliver their lines,” Blaine said, though the words felt harsh as soon as he said them. It was a problem of his, actually, how every time he watched a movie he dissected it in his mind, broke it into its component parts and thought about how he would have done things differently were he the director.

“At least they managed to do it without stuttering or looking constipated, which is more than I can say for the _Twilight_ saga,” Kurt countered, and Blaine couldn’t help but chuckle.

“What was your favorite part?” he asked.

“Any time Brad Pitt wasn’t wearing a shirt,” Kurt said wistfully.

“I’m being serious.”

Kurt leveled him with his best sardonic look. “So am I.”

“Okay, favorite _line,_ then,” Blaine tried—at some points during the movie, he’d wanted to sit up and punch the air at some of the lines in the script. The writing, at least, was stellar.

“His one candle wish,” Kurt answered after a few moments, eyes fixed straight ahead of him. “That he wants his friends and family to wake up one morning and say, ‘I don’t want anything more’. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

“Never wanting anything? I don’t know. Going after the things we want… It’s what drives us, what defines us.”

“No, that’s not what defines us. What defines us is the choice of whether or not we do go after the things that we want, because either way, your life ends up changing,” Kurt said thoughtfully, and Blaine had to admit that there was hardly room for argument.

“I’m not sure if I’ll ever be done wanting things. Done… baking,” Blaine said.

“That’s a good thing, B. Trust me,” Kurt replied.

“How so?”

“You’re done baking when you settle.”

“Like… Settle down with a family?” Blaine asked, and Kurt shook his head, focusing on some point in the middle distance.

“When you settle for all you think you’re ever going to get out of life. That’s the timer going off,” Kurt said. “Anyway. What was _your_ favorite line?”

“Oh, uh…” Blaine began, reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck as if he were thinking. Really, it was to buy himself time to remember anything other than his favorite line of the entire movie, spoken just sixteen minutes in by Anthony Hopkins himself. He couldn’t say that that was his favorite line; what would Kurt think? What would he _say?_ Kurt would know. He would know straight away what had been going through Blaine’s head for the past couple of days and then things would just become super-awkward, and they had over three months to go. No, he had to think of something else. The problem was that he couldn’t. All he could remember were the words that had hooked him:

_“I know it’s a cornball thing, but love is passion. Obsession. Someone you can’t live without. I say fall head over heels. Find someone you can love like crazy, and who’ll love you the same way back. How do you find ‘em? Well, you forget your head and listen to your heart. I’m not hearing any heart. Because the truth is, honey, there’s no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven’t lived a life at all. But you have to try, because if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.”_

“Blaine, seriously, what’s up with you tonight?” Kurt asked, stopping to face him with concern in his eyes. “Are you coming down with something?”

Blaine swallowed. _“Don’t blow smoke up my ass; you’ll ruin my autopsy,”_ he said, with as genuine a smile as he could muster.

Kurt looked puzzled for a moment, and then the corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. “Of all the great lines in that movie, you pick that one?”

Blaine shrugged, and Kurt shook his head.

“I would’ve thought you’d pick something like… Hey, do you hear that?” Kurt asked, inclining his head towards the direction of the river. Blaine mirrored the motion, meeting Kurt’s eyes when he also heard it—music, faint and uplifting.

“Free gig?” he asked.

Kurt lifted his head, delicately sniffing the air, and a slow grin curved along the line of his lips. “Tell me you can smell smoke, too,” he said, his eyes sparkling in the yellow glow of the streetlamps bordering the park, lighting their way to the water.

A quick, deep inhale and Blaine was nodding—a fragrant, aromatic scent of wood smoke was barely detectable but just there, undercutting the smell of the freshly cut park grass. Kurt grinned even wider, tucked his fingers into the crook of Blaine’s elbow and then they were running, faster and faster, towards the river. Kurt’s grip on his arm faltered but their pace didn’t, and Blaine called out, “Kurt, what’s going on?”

“I heard about this but I didn’t think there was going to be a show today!” Kurt called over his shoulder, beckoning Blaine onward with a wave of his hand. “You’ll see when we get there!”

It seemed like no time at all that they were coming to an abrupt halt on the bridge just past Exchange Terrace, Blaine slotting himself into the teeming crowd next to Kurt. A band was set up behind them on Citizens Plaza, the song they were playing one that Blaine recognized from one of Lucy’s study playlists— _[Ashes](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44019443300),_ he thought with a brief, nostalgic smile. It soared over the heads of the people gathered to watch what was happening out on the water: heat, and light, and fire.

Stately, torch-lit gondolas glided along the water, past floating braziers that burned and crackled brightly in the night. Leaning slightly over the edge of the bridge, Blaine could feel the heat on his face and he could see the long line of bonfires stretching off into the distance, thousands of spectators lining the banks of the river and all lit up by the flames.

Jostled by people wanting to get closer to the edge, he moved closer to Kurt, standing half behind him with one hand resting either side of Kurt’s body on the bridge wall. They were pressed closely enough together that Blaine could smell the spicy top notes of Kurt’s cologne over the scents of cedar and pine infused in the night air, and once again he tried not to feel like too much of a creep when he leaned even closer to speak into Kurt’s ear.

“Kurt, what _is_ this?”

“WaterFire,” Kurt told him breathlessly, head turned towards Blaine but eyes still fixed upon the events below. “It’s a non-profit arts thing they do through summer and fall, but I was sure we were going to miss it. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Blaine nodded, swallowing thickly—the sense of magic and enchantment in the air was tangible and heady. For most of the song they simply watched, and when he felt Kurt beginning to stand straight and turn around, Blaine quickly stepped back. He caught his breath for a moment, taking in the sight of Kurt gently back-lit by the fire show and having never looked quite so alive and joyous, and then Kurt was tugging on his elbow again, saying something about going to sit out on the end of the stone platform that tapered out from the bridge and into a point, so that they could see the gondolas close-up.

As they were seating themselves at the end of the platform, legs dangling over the edge, the band started [the next song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44019535185) on their set list. The crowd’s attention was momentarily diverted away from the water as they let out a cheer for the quieter, folksy introduction of a song, and Blaine’s breath hitched at the first lyric, the singer’s voice ringing out clear over the cheering.

_“I am the boy your mother wanted you to meet, but I am broken and torn with halos at my feet…”_

He was caught, captured as he took in the beatific smile on Kurt’s face, flames reflected in his eyes and flickering across his pale, lightly freckled skin. The crowd joined in with the chorus, hundreds and thousands of voices winding around him as they vocalized and sang the words, _“what a crying shame, a crying shame what we became.”_

The bright yet bittersweet mood of the song juxtaposed against the slow progression of the gondolas along the river somehow buoyed Blaine up, filling him with a sad sort of happiness. Everything was pure and beautiful, Kurt most of all, and he wondered if they had missed their chance, wondered if they had ever been destined for anything else, anything more than what they had confined themselves to in order to hold onto one another for as long as possible. Were they meant for something more?

Kurt was reaching out to a woman clad in floaty white robes gliding past, standing up in her gondola, and she handed him a white carnation that he held to his nose, eyes flicking to Blaine over the top of the petals. Without conscious thought of what he was doing, Blaine slid his arm around Kurt’s waist, shifting closer and never once letting his gaze waver. Strings layered through the song’s second chorus, a beat kicking in, and Blaine could feel himself leaning infinitesimally closer, tongue darting out to wet his lips. Kurt tensed beneath his arm and let the flower fall to his lap, wide eyes flicking down to Blaine’s mouth and back up again, and oh, how had Blaine never _seen_ him before? Was this moment, this single, suspended moment, exactly what Carole had meant?

The song, the water and the sound of fire crackling became nothing but the score to their wonderful, unexpected, perfect movie moment, and at once it felt like something inevitable. He moved in even closer, tilting his face slightly upward, and his breath was leaving his body in a single, shuddering exhale as his eyelids fluttered closed, and—

Cheering, louder even than the singing throughout the song had been. Blaine’s eyes snapped open once more and he reared back, realizing that the song had ended abruptly and without warning. Kurt blinked at him owlishly and cleared his throat, finally dropping his gaze to the flower in his lap, the pristine white petals a shock against the dark material of his jeans. Blaine mentally shook himself.

 _What the_ fuck _was that, Anderson? Your life isn’t a goddamn movie; way to go about alienating your best friend a week into the trip._

There was applause, rousing and loud; Blaine took his arm from around Kurt’s waist and joined in just to give his hands something to do. He wanted to slap himself silly; what had he been thinking? In the space of twenty bottomless seconds, he’d almost ruined everything, and judging by the confused expression on Kurt’s face as he slowly, dazedly clapped his hands, he might have already succeeded.

 

**Distance: 805.8 miles**

*

[Kurt's Blog](http://100daysofkurt.tumblr.com) | [Blaine's Blog](http://100daysofblaine.tumblr.com) | [The Music](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

**Day 010: Wednesday 26 September, 2012  
Not for the Faint of Heart (Connecticut)**

_“Hmm. I’ve never seen that one before. April always used to rave about it, though.”_

_“And_ All About Eve _is a classic…”_

_“Nah. Let’s try something new.”_

 

“What did I say to you this morning?”

Kurt paused with the last bite of pizza halfway to his mouth and regarded Blaine through narrowed eyes. His gaze was too focused, like the beam of a laser zeroed in on him, and his face entirely too bright and open. It was what Blaine looked like when he was trying to overcompensate for something, when he was intentionally playing dumb and acting like something huge hadn’t happened, keeping his head down and hoping for it all to be swept beneath the carpet like the family issues that had plagued his home life throughout his childhood and teenage years.

It was maddening. Kurt was the product of an open home, where the issues were discussed at length—much to everyone’s embarrassment, at times—and resolutions reached. He was also not someone who often shied away from confrontation. He was quick-witted with a razor-sharp tongue, and when there was an argument to be had, he knew how to stand his ground and usually come out on top.

The thing was that there was no argument to be had over whatever the hell was going on with Blaine. A confrontation of sorts, yes, but a confrontation he had no idea how to approach. In order to do so, he would have to first work through his own thoughts and feelings about what had almost happened between them on the platform. He’d realized that he wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea of Blaine closing the distance between them and pressing his lips to Kurt’s in a kiss that he hadn’t even known he’d been anticipating until they were mere inches apart. Facing up to that was going to open up an entire can of worms that he wasn’t in any way prepared to deal with just yet.

“Something about the rooster,” he finally answered, taking his bite of pizza and chewing it slowly, savoring the rich blend of herbs, spices and tomato. Neither the movie nor the website had been lying—the Mystic Pizza was heavenly. Coupled with the cozy, warm and inviting atmosphere, right down to the eclectic radio station blaring [Sneaker Pimps](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44019647429) and [Sigur Ros](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44081954142), it felt like this place was probably the worst kept secret in all of Connecticut.

“Right. That stupid rooster,” Blaine muttered, and Kurt pursed his lips against a smile—the crowing had started at around five a.m. and hadn’t stopped for at least an hour. He vowed that, despite the undeniable pleasantness of getting an early start, it was the last time they would park the R.V. anywhere near a farm.

“I was only half-listening, to be honest,” Kurt said, wiping his hands on his napkin and setting it over his cleared plate.

“I don’t blame you,” Blaine said, and echoed Kurt’s movements before crossing his arms over his chest and leaning his elbows on the table top. “So you remember what happens today, right?”

“Blaine, can we not?” Kurt pleaded, dropping his head into his hands. “I’m already suffering pre-traumatic stress disorder.”

“I swear to god, sometimes you’re more melodramatic than a Chekhov play,” Blaine countered.

“Yes, well, Chekhov was never subjected to the horrors of Walmart,” Kurt said. “And up until five seconds ago I was doing a great job of forgetting all about them.”

“Aw, poor Kurt,” Blaine teased him in a wheedling voice before finally relenting, pulling out his wallet and paying their bill, and leaving what looked like a generous tip. “Okay, let’s talk about something else. Favorite… Favorite scene from the movie.”

“The pub, the one that looked like a house,” Kurt said, shrugging into his jacket. He followed Blaine down the stairs that led out of the restaurant with one last glance around to commit every inch of the place to memory. “Did it remind you of the Cannery, too?”

“If you’re thinking of that one time we tried smoking, get out of my head.”

“I totally was. What about you? Favorite scene?”

“I don’t know, I mean… I can’t really pick just one. I liked the story about the guy who built the house for his wife,” Blaine said as they made their way around to the parking lot at the back of the building. “You know, no one does that anymore. Build a house for their husband, or wife. It’s all down payments and escrow and mortgages. Isn’t there something kind of romantic about building a house with the person you love? Choosing everything together, right down to the roof tiles?”

“First you have to decide where home actually is,” Kurt replied. As they reached the R.V., he unlocked the passenger side door and tossed the keys to Blaine—he wasn’t about to drive himself to his own demise, after all. “But yeah, I can see how that’d be romantic.”

“Did I just hear you say the word ‘romantic’ unironically, Kurt Hummel? Is the ice finally melting?”

“I only said that I could see how it would be romantic, not that I thought it was.”

Blaine said nothing—he didn’t need to; his grin said it all.

“Just shut up and drive. Let’s get this over with.”

 

Their route down I-95 passed all too quickly, and the pit of dread in Kurt’s stomach only grew bigger the closer to New Haven they got. Before he was ready for it, the pre-programmed voice of the GPS was cheerfully telling them that they had reached their destination.

“We need to change the GPS voice,” Kurt said, making no move to unbuckle his seat belt when Blaine cut the engine. “I’m going to have nightmares about it for months after we get back.”

“She sounds kind of… Kathy Bates in _Misery,_ doesn’t she?”

“Oh my god, _thank you._ I’ve been trying to figure it out ever since we left.”

With no response from Blaine aside from a brief, quiet laugh, Kurt fell silent and glared through the windshield at the sprawling building at the other end of the parking lot.

“You know, it might not be as bad as you think,” Blaine said gently, slowly unclipping his seat belt as if Kurt were some kind of flighty animal with a low startle point. Kurt snorted before letting out a long-suffering sigh and following suit.

“I’ve seen the People of Walmart blog, Blaine. I know exactly how bad it’s going to be.”

When they were almost at the automatic sliding doors, Blaine fished his phone out of his pocket. “Let’s turn this into a game,” he said. “The winner is whoever gets the most People of Walmart-worthy pictures.”

Kurt smiled weakly, took a bracing breath, and followed him inside.

His first impression was that perhaps Blaine was right. It wasn’t entirely hideous—bright and open, and it at least smelled clean. It seemed that they’d timed their visit well, for there wasn’t an intolerable amount of people milling around, mostly mothers with infants.

“Got one,” Blaine murmured, surreptitiously snapping a picture of a middle-aged balding man in a white t-shirt and what looked suspiciously like pajama pants. He had his back turned to them as he walked towards the housewares section, and Kurt raised his eyebrows when he took in the clear plastic hanger hooked over the back of his collar, two identical white t-shirts just hanging there as he went about his business.

“Oh my god. Let’s just get this over with,” Kurt muttered, and turned to grab a cart.

Thankfully—due in part to the amount of times they’d fallen back on lazy student ways and eaten out instead of cooking—their grocery list was short, and by the time they found the alcohol their cart was only half-full. Kurt had taken over full control of the cart when it had become obvious that Blaine couldn’t be trusted not to loiter around the baked goods, and they’d made good time. He might have even gone so far as to have said it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant pit stop.

And then they reached the end of the aisle, and Blaine’s knobbly elbow was digging sharply into Kurt’s side, tearing his attention away from the tequila—yellow, never clear—that he’d discovered an affinity for during freshman orientation at Bowdoin.

“Blaine, what the—“

“Look at the baby.”

Kurt turned back to let his gaze follow where Blaine was pointing, his expectations so set on seeing an infant sweet enough to make his teeth hurt that at first he didn’t even notice. When the sight before him finally registered, his eyes went wide.

Halfway down the opposite aisle was what looked like an abandoned cart with a baby of about nine months, clad only in a diaper, lying sideways across the child seat. The top of its head was pushed up against the metal bars of the cart, and as they watched, it rapidly cried itself awake. There was no one else in the aisle, no sign of a mother or father or even a nanny anywhere.

“Did someone just abandon it?” Blaine hissed.

“God, I hope not. Especially not in a Walmart.”

“What if they did? Kurt, we can’t just leave it like that…”

“And we can’t just touch someone else’s baby!”

“We could at least go sit him up. Look how uncomfortable that must be,” Blaine reasoned, and Kurt had to admit that he couldn’t imagine having thin metal bars digging into one’s head as being particularly enjoyable. “Although… What if he hasn’t been abandoned? What if the mom comes back and yells at us? Oh my god, what if she tries to get us arrested—“

“Blaine, calm down. Look, let’s just… Okay, let’s go sit him up, and we can wait to see if anyone comes back.”

They approached cautiously, and Kurt briefly wondered if whomever was watching the security cameras was already calling the police, suspicious that there was about to be a kidnapping. The baby was crying louder and louder, and still there was no sign of anyone even closely resembling a parent.

Kurt cast a cursory glance at the contents of the cart—a pack of diapers, jars upon jars of baby food—before even looking at the baby, with its reddened face and legs trying to kick out. He chewed the inside of his bottom lip through a moment of indecision before finally reaching inside the cart.

“Wait!” Blaine whispered. “What if he can’t hold his head up yet?”

Gesturing to the cart, Kurt quickly explained, “Babies don’t start on solids until four to six months, and they can usually hold their heads up by then. This guy looks around nine or ten months, so we’re fine.”

“You’re like Sherlock Holmes, Baby Edition.”

“Shut up.”

As if on cue, the baby’s cries grew considerably quieter, and Kurt blinked in surprise.

“What are you, the baby whisperer now?” Blaine asked, sounding mostly derisive but a little impressed.

“Shut _up,”_ Kurt hissed again.

Without giving himself time to hesitate and second-guess the entire thing, Kurt reached out to sit the baby up. When he was upright, with his hands squeezing the plastic bar and chubby legs kicking out underneath the seat, he looked almost happy.

“That’s much better, isn’t it, little guy?”

“What are you doing? Get away from my baby!”

At the screeching voice, Kurt whirled on the spot to see a short, frizzy-haired woman carrying a toddler on her hip and clutching a large bottle of margarita mix in her other hand. She marched toward them with all the fierce presence of an Amazonian warrior, the angry and stricken look on her face immediately setting alarm bells ringing in Kurt’s mind.

“Abort mission, abort mission,” Blaine hissed through gritted teeth, and Kurt raised his hands as the woman drew closer.

“Ma’am, we were just making sure he was alright. He woke up crying and we couldn’t see anyone—“

“Get away from him!” she repeated, her voice exactly the same volume it had been from the end of the aisle. She pushed past them both, all but threw the bottle into the cart and then took off, stopping only to toss one last dirty look over her shoulder as Kurt and Blaine both stood there, dumbfounded.

“People of fucking Walmart,” Kurt said after a few seconds had passed, and from the corner of his eye he could see Blaine’s hand twitch, as if to reach out and comfort him.

“How did you know all of that baby stuff? You were amazing,” Blaine said earnestly, settling his hand at the small of Kurt’s back and guiding him back towards their cart. Kurt almost jumped out of his skin at the contact; the first time Blaine had touched him since their almost kiss—because that’s exactly what it was, wasn’t it?—at WaterFire.

“Helps to have a midwife for a stepmom,” Kurt said fondly, and reminded himself to call home.

“But you’ve totally got the instinct,” Blaine pressed as they rounded the corner at the end of the aisle and founds themselves wandering slowly past shelves full of party supplies.

“I guess that’s a good thing, if I ever wanna have kids,” Kurt said.

“Do you?”

“I mean, it depends on where I end up. I’d like to live in a state that’ll let me adopt, of course, but… Yeah, I’d like kids someday.”

“Me too,” Blaine agreed. “Two girls and a boy.”

“Why that combination?”

“Well, with two dads, I wouldn’t want my daughter to feel like the only girl in a house full of guys, and since I want at least two kids, I figure why not make it three?” Blaine said. “What about you?”

“I’ve always thought a girl and a boy, but your reasoning actually makes a lot of sense.”

“And I’d have all of them close together, so that they didn’t end up ten years apart like Cooper and I.”

“Agreed. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have a sibling that much older or younger than me, but I guess that’s what the age gap would have been if Mom—“ Kurt stopped abruptly, trying to clear his throat at the sudden, acrid burn of bile. He could feel Blaine’s hesitant gaze settle upon him, and he turned his attention instead to the shelves closest to them, picking up a pack of napkins printed with lassos and horseshoes. “Remember your cowboy-themed party?”

“You mean the best party ever? Of course I do,” Blaine answered smoothly, and Kurt shot him a grateful look. “I should totally throw another one.”

“Blaine, you know having a cowboy party at twenty-two is a lot different than having a cowboy party at ten, right?”

“Cowboys are hot and you know it, Kurt Hummel. After all, who was the one who was so gung-ho about _Brokeback_ being our Wyoming movie when barely any of it was actually shot _in_ Wyoming?”

“You saw the alternatives, Blaine,” Kurt retorted, replacing the pack of napkins on the shelf and continuing their slow amble down the aisle.

“How do you feel, knowing you’ve survived your first trip to Walmart?” Blaine asked after a few moments had passed.

Kurt just snorted derisively. “Barely survived. We still have to check out.”

“Hey, seriously,” Blaine said, catching him by the arm. Kurt stopped, turned, and held his breath. Blaine was doing that thing again, the thing where his whole body got tense in the most effortlessly languid way, as if he was suspended in the moment of experiencing release and relief and getting every single thing he ever wanted all at once. The exact same thing that Kurt had felt in him when Blaine’s arm was around his waist, when Blaine’s lips were inches from his own, and Kurt’s heart stuttered in his chest at the mere memory. And just like that, the tension was gone and Blaine was wrapping him in a hug, half-whispering, “I’m totally proud of you.”

Just as Blaine was stepping back, Kurt weakly lifted his arms and caught him loosely by the elbows, capturing them both in a replay of that moment on the platform. Blaine’s eyes were honeyed and warm, searching his own for an answer to the question of what to do next, and Kurt felt his tried-and-tested sultry smirk just beginning to tug at the corners of his mouth when, out of nowhere, two teenagers dressed in hoodies and jeans went careening past them, their cart almost knocking them over.

“Surviving,” Kurt muttered as he stepped away, and Blaine sighed heavily, burying his hands in his pockets and looking anywhere but Kurt.

He handed over control of their cart to Blaine, wrapping his arms around his middle as they set off the way they had come, all thoughts of tequila somehow forgotten in the shuffle. As they walked to the front of the store in silence, Kurt stole a brief glance at Blaine, taking in the set of his jaw and his furrowed brow. It was the look he wore when he was either fighting with himself, lying to himself, or both.

 _And the lies that we tell ourselves when we’re young are so much more throwaway than the ones we tell ourselves as we get older,_ Kurt thought. _There’s always so much less at stake._

Which was the entire reason that they could talk about any topic under the sun except this one, why this was the one thing that made Kurt feel like his throat was filled with glue. It wasn’t like they’d met only six weeks ago, or even six months ago; their entire shared history could vanish with a touch of lips or rushing hands. They could wreck each other, and then what?

“Okay, don’t panic…” Blaine trailed off, pulling Kurt from his woolgathering. “But I just saw a rat.”

Kurt stopped in his tracks, and pinched between his eyes. “Blaine… Can we please just find a fucking Whole Foods now?”

 

**Distance: 912.8 miles**

*

**Day 013: Saturday 29 September, 2012  
Waterlights (New York)**

_“New York, on the other hand… There’s a city made for a classic.”_

_“And what do you suggest?”_

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s, _of course.”_

 

It was their third night in New York, and already Blaine knew he would never get enough of the city of a million movies. His mind was filled to the rafters with moving snapshots of every moment so far, playing on a loop in his mind. The awestruck expression on Kurt’s face as he looked out over the Hudson while they breezed down the 9A, [_Empire State of Mind Part II_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44641488537) quietly playing in the background. The entire world full of color and light as they turned on the spot at the bottom of the TKTS steps in Times Square, where Blaine had felt as if he was running inexplicably late for something. Craning his neck on the 6 to try and catch a glimpse of the faded glory of the disused City Hall station. A bona fide breakfast at Tiffany’s with croissants from the Macaron Café. Laying a single red rose of gratitude and memoriam on a bench in Christopher Park and stepping inside the Stonewall Inn a few minutes later, his throat thick with a borrowed memory.

After the very first item on their list—window shopping all the way up and down Fifth Avenue—Kurt had dragged him to Grand Central, and they had both stopped in the middle of the main concourse to look up at the arched windows set high into the brick walls. When Blaine had asked why Kurt looked a little sad, he’d answered, “You’ve seen all those black and white photographs of the way this place used to be, sunlight streaming in through those windows right there. It can’t do that anymore because the buildings around this place are too tall.”

“That’s my star cinematographer,” Blaine had replied, nudging Kurt’s shoulder with his own. “Always worrying about where the light’s coming from.”

“I’m serious, Blaine! Shooting in this city must be a logistical nightmare…”

Even so, Blaine had never seen Kurt so full of life and wonder, not even in Boston. The previous night, after they had decided to capitalize on their advantageously close proximity to the Statue of Liberty, they had fallen into the bed they’d taken to sharing most nights and Kurt had talked long into the dark hours about all of the city’s little nuances, all the places he wanted to come back and explore, everywhere he wanted to work someday.

And now, standing on the observation deck at the top of Rockefeller Center with his gaze sweeping from one side of the horizon to the other, Blaine truly wondered if it could ever get better than this. Sure, he hadn’t found the one place he truly belonged like he had been hoping—and expecting, given the astounding mix of cultures to which New York played host—but he was still in the greatest city in the world, sharing every second with his best friend.

“I can totally see why people pay so much money for penthouse apartments,” Kurt said from next to him as he fed another quarter into the coin-operated binoculars. “If I could have even a tiny fraction of this view, I’d be happy.”

Now that Kurt had distracted Blaine from the view out over Central Park, however, Blaine’s attention drifted downward to where the fabric of Kurt’s jacket stretched across the breadth of his back, the way the tight, dark denim of Kurt’s jeans hugged the curve of his ass so tightly that they could have been painted onto him. He really was unfairly attractive, and Blaine found himself wishing that the number of spectators milling around the deck was much higher, if only to give Blaine an excuse to stand closer to him, close enough that he could justify half-fitting their bodies together just like he had on the bridge at WaterFire. He wanted to be back down on the streets, in the middle of the almost oppressive crush where the danger of losing one another in the crowd was so great that Kurt would end up with fingers tightly gripping the crook of Blaine’s elbow.

The craving to touch and be close was agonizingly frustrating—it was an itch beneath the surface of his skin that he couldn’t scratch, one that only grew worse no matter how many times he told himself that it didn’t even exist, that it was simply a physical reaction to spending so much time with a hot guy. A hot guy with legs for days, broad shoulders, thick hair he could card his fingers through until he couldn’t see them, and a way of looking at him sometimes that made him feel like he was the beating heart at the center of the universe.

“This is becoming a problem,” Blaine thought aloud, cursing inwardly when Kurt quirked an eyebrow up at him in question. Thinking more quickly than he generally considered himself able, he added, “I, uh… don’t think I can leave this view, you know.”

“I know what you mean,” Kurt said, straightening up with a sigh. “But I’m exhausted and I’d rather not fall asleep halfway along the Brooklyn Bridge, so…”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

They rode the R from 49th to City Hall, Blaine sharing Kurt’s iPod and listening along to _[City of Blinding Lights](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44743035403),_ watching their reflections in the opposite window each time they went through a tunnel. He tried not to think too much about the first line of the song— _the more you see, the less you know—_ and how perfectly fitting it was. Nevertheless it remained stuck in his head throughout eating the hot dogs they bought from one of the vendors in the park, right up until they were about to step onto the Brooklyn Bridge, when he spotted a gay couple walking in the opposite direction, hand in hand.

“We should hold hands,” he blurted out before he could stop himself, all at once feeling like he was twelve years old.

Kurt stared at him for a long moment, before finally asking, “Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Because we’re _here,_ and we _can,_ that’s why.”

“My hands are still greasy from that hot dog.”

Blaine rolled his eyes and grabbed Kurt’s hand, holding on tightly and leading him onto the bridge. They were silent in the cool night as they walked, and Blaine found himself suddenly grateful for the quiet, for the fact that he could walk hand in hand with Kurt without feeling like he was overstepping some boundary or crossing some line—both between himself and Kurt, and between them and the rest of the world. It was a blessedly uncomplicated moment, and Blaine reveled in it, giving Kurt’s warm hand a reassuring squeeze and earning himself an uncharacteristically shy smile in return.

“Wow,” he breathed at the center of the bridge, where Kurt gently unclasped their hands and they both looked out at the breathtaking light show before them.

Tom Fruin’s _Watertower_ stood proudly atop a collection of artists’ studios on Jay Street, lights switching and undulating from within the multicolored stained-Plexiglas structure that stood as tribute and monument to the ten thousand water towers throughout the borough of Brooklyn.

“Now _that's_ something I’d put in a movie,” Kurt said quietly, after Blaine had spent a few minutes trying to find any sort of discernible pattern in the light sequencing.

“I’d love to see how you’d work it in.”

“Title montage, maybe?”

“No, this place is worth more. I mean, look at it. It’s a work of art—totally worthy of the moment the two leads finally get over themselves.”

Kurt bit his lip for a moment, seeming to consider something as he straightened up, chin tilting upward almost infinitesimally. Blaine knew that look.

“So maybe I’m the one with the drinking problem who’d been doing much better, but fell off the wagon. Everything had been going so well, and suddenly everything was falling apart around me,” Kurt said. He closed his eyes, rolled his neck and dropped his shoulders, and it was like he was wearing another skin entirely. He approached the side of the bridge, leaning his folded arms on the rusted metal plate of the bridge wall, his eyes taking on a far-away look as he gazed at Watertower.

“And something pithy and clichéd was said to me, the guy who’s desperately, head-over-heels in love with you, despite all of your flaws, and I’ve been looking for you all night,” Blaine continued, backing up a few paces and stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Oh, and it’s raining.”

“Obviously. And I’m trying to figure out a way to fix everything I’ve fucked up, but I just—I just _can’t,”_ Kurt exclaimed, dropping his head into his hands.

“And then I see you, and call out your name.”

Obediently, Kurt pulled his hands out of his hair and looked around at Blaine, abject guilt coloring his features, and not for the first time Blaine wondered why Kurt had never wanted to be an actor. “The obligatory ‘what are you doing here?’ line, of course.”

Blaine jogged closer, leaving no more than two feet of space between them, and tipped his head back a little so that he could look directly up into Kurt’s eyes. He looked tortured, full of regret, but still hopeful, and Blaine felt himself falling a little further into their silly, improvised scene. “Maybe they don’t need any words, or maybe they need an epic, _When Harry Met Sally-_ style speech.”

“I think the latter. No music, just the rain,” Kurt said, and then tentatively reached out to take Blaine’s arms. “You say something, and I try to disagree with you, and you steamroll over me, and of course, I ask you what happens next.”

“Close-up shot, I tell you that we’ll figure it out, pause, _together,”_ Blaine said. Kurt looked down with a coy smile, and Blaine—Blaine’s assumed character—tensed in anticipation.

“Switches to a profile shot,” Kurt said quietly, looking at Blaine through his long eyelashes. “Watertower’s perfectly framed between us, and we lean in…”

Though he didn’t move a muscle, there was a challenge in Kurt’s eyes, and for one endless moment it felt like everything had ground to a standstill. Cars and pedestrians alike had stopped in their tracks, the thick clouds overhead were no longer moving, and even the lights inside Watertower were frozen.

“Blaine…”

It was a reverent whisper; Blaine shivered, and that was all it took. Whatever spell had befallen them was broken, had been swept away by the chill breeze that washed over them both, and Kurt shook his head as if to clear it as he stepped back. Blaine wanted to say something, wanted to try and speak around the lump that sat heavily just above the dip in the center of collarbone, but Kurt was already looking back at Watertower, taking a deep breath that made his shoulders rise and stay there even after he let it out.

“Something like that?” Kurt asked, voice strung tight.

_Something like that, but something more. Something where I’m not afraid to kiss you just because of what it might mean for us, where it’s an act of faith the likes of which I’m not sure I have._

Blaine cleared his throat and hummed an agreement he didn’t believe in. Maybe they needed to go out somewhere they’d be forced to interact with other people, get out of this little intense bubble of two they’d formed and stayed inside. They were sinking into new habits that felt somehow old, like they’d always done exactly this but never recognized it for what it truly was.

All he knew was that something had to give, and soon.

 

**Distance: 1,000 miles**

*

**Day 015: Monday 1st October, 2012  
The Wisdom of Strangers (New Jersey)**

_“Damn the Man, save the Empire!”_

_“I’m drawing a blank.”_

_“Seriously, Blaine? No veto for you…”_

 

“You want him, don’t you?”

“Yes. Wait, what?”

Kurt dragged his eyes away from where Blaine was dancing to _[Point of View](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44743233391),_ his features animated as he talked to one of the other engagement party guests, and glanced up at where Andrew stood next to him at the bar. He wore a knowing expression, and took a slow sip of his Negroni while watching Kurt over the rim of his glass.

“Blaine,” he finally said. “You want him.”

“No, I—“

“Every time I’ve looked over at you, you’ve had your eyes glued to him,” Andrew continued, sliding onto a stool and signaling the bartender for a refill for Kurt, who’d been playing it safe with vodka-cranberries for most of the evening. It was his turn to drive in the morning, and he didn’t want to be hungover for it. “So why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

“That’s none—“

“—of my business, I know. Indulge me.”

Kurt regarded him coolly for a moment, this tall, dark and handsome thirty-something professional with whom he’d been acquainted for approximately three hours and felt himself wishing he could go back to a far simpler time in his life, when he could have just walked away without it being seen as an act of cowardice.

Didn’t things used to be so much simpler? They had certainly felt like it the previous day, when he and Blaine had spent the entirety of their Sunday wandering the Ocean City boardwalk, checking out the shops and ducking seagulls, and finally heading to the movies to catch a revival showing of _Empire Records._ Before they had made a last-minute decision to head up to Hoboken to check out the waterfront, Blaine had been threatening to buy him a neon yellow t-shirt bearing the ‘YOLO’ slogan, until Kurt had reminded him that he could only get away with buying him one obnoxious shirt per year.

Without dwelling upon the fact that Kurt had let his eyes flutter closed for a second each and every time Blaine’s arm had brushed his at the movie theater, it had been like nothing had changed between them, like these moments of push and pull that they’d for some reason been experiencing had never even happened. Like he hadn’t wanted to take Blaine’s face in his hands and kiss him until they both couldn’t breathe, right there on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Obviously, it was just a sex thing. Kurt hadn’t gotten laid in a while, and as he’d said to April the day before they left, anyone could see that Blaine was hot. The difference was that Blaine was also his best friend, and there was a line between them that couldn’t be crossed, no matter how sexually frustrated he was. Blaine deserved better than that.

“We’re best friends,” Kurt said, leaning his elbow on the bar and cupping the back of his head. “Have been since we were six. It just… It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“And why not?” Andrew asked conversationally, as if he were enquiring about the weather and not the very foundation of Kurt’s entire value system.

“I mean, there was a time when I thought that maybe… Maybe we’d end up as more than what we are, but… I was just a kid. What we have now is—is much better. He’s my best friend, you know? He’s the most important person in the world to me, and I don’t know that I could take that chance and risk fucking everything up,” Kurt admitted, the words tumbling from his mouth before he could stop them. Perhaps there was something to this whole ‘confidence in strangers’ thing after all. Andrew was silent for a moment, looking like he was carefully considering something, and Kurt decided to change the subject before their conversation started striking all the wrong chords. “Anyway, this is your night! Tell me about how you and Toby met.”

“Ha! Well, um… I’d just moved to the city to be with my college boyfriend who was already living there, and when I showed up a day early, I found him fucking somebody else in the bed that was supposed to be ours. I had nowhere to go; David was the only person I knew in the city, and so of course I went to a bar. And…” Andrew trailed off, his voice growing soft as he looked over at where Toby sat talking with two girls, everything about him artfully and impeccably disheveled, from his wild bird’s nest of blond hair to his loosened tie, and he somehow managed to pull it off without looking like a thirty-year-old poser. “There he was. I walked into this shitty little hole in the wall called The Crow, and he was in the middle of changing his shirt, right there behind the bar.”

“Love at first sight?” Kurt asked slyly.

“Hardly. He took one look at my face and mixed me one of these,” Andrew said, tilting his glass. “We talked all night, he gave me a place to crash, and about six months later I finally got my act together and kissed him. The rest is history.”

“Who proposed?”

Andrew’s laugh came out as a sharp bark, and he wiped his hand over his face. “He did, behind a fucking 7-Eleven.”

Kurt furrowed his brow. “How does that even happen?”

“Oh, he didn’t plan on it, I’m sure. He’d spent a month doing all these things for me… Expensive dinners, dropping by my office with a surprise latte and a cruller, taking me to some of my favorite places in the city… You know, the usual proposal set-ups. And there always seemed to be something on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn’t get the words out. Of course, I had no idea. We’d never even talked about getting married before the laws changed.

“Anyway, we were on our way back from dinner one night and I got so frustrated with the way he was acting that I just picked a fight with him. I don’t even remember what it was about now. We stopped for gas, and I just—I had to take a minute to get my shit together, because fighting never solves a fucking thing. Anyway, I was standing around behind this 7-Eleven and he just came out of nowhere and started in on round forty-six, going on and on about how I’m so damn hard to propose to. So once I got over the surprise of it all, I just told him he could ask me right then and there, and I’d say yes.”

“And he asked you, and you said yes,” Kurt prompted, and Andrew grinned.

“He got down on one knee and just looked at me like he hated me a little bit, and said, ‘so will you marry me or not?’ And I kicked him in the shin for being such an asshole about it, but yeah, I said yes.”

Kurt smiled despite himself, and found his gaze wandering back to settle on Blaine once more, still dancing and surrounded by people smiling and having a good time. He watched the way Blaine’s hips moved, how he turned on the spot and shook his shoulders back and forth. When Blaine caught his eye and grinned, the low light casting shadows across his face, Kurt’s stomach dropped and he turned back to Andrew.

“Kurt, I don’t expect you to completely understand what I’m about to say to you,” Andrew began, scratching at the stubble beneath his chin. “But there’s something that my dad always used to say to me, and that was, ‘Try everything once, but make the mistakes first.’”

“I don’t wanna make this mistake,” Kurt replied quietly, eyes trained on his glass. He’d never been that great at telling lies right to a person’s face.

“Is this guy bothering you?”

Toby had appeared at Kurt’s other side seemingly from out of nowhere, glancing down at him with kind eyes and a knowing smirk. He stood straight, self-assured, and with a napkin wrapped around the stem of his wine glass.

“Not at all,” Kurt answered breezily, as if all was right with the world and he hadn’t just been getting his ass handed to him along with a side of truth bomb. “Thank you for inviting us, by the way. It’s a great party.”

“It’s the least we could do after Andrew took you to the pavement downstairs,” Toby said, waving him off with a slight wince.

“Sorry again about that,” Andrew intoned. “There’s fashionably late, obnoxiously late, and then there’s us.”

“It’s fine, I promise. I don’t bruise all that easily,” Kurt quipped—another lie. He’d already been to the bathroom once to check out the wicked bruise that was already blossoming purple and red along his hip. Perhaps he needed to start looking around corners with a mirror—perhaps not, if getting mown down by a handsome stranger was a thing that was going to happen to him now.

“Well, if I’m not interrupting, I just wanted to see about stealing away my fiancé for a dance, now that the band is off their break,” Toby said, and Kurt nodded.

“Of course, of course.”

“Maybe it’s not a mistake. Things like this are never that complicated, you know. It’s people that complicate them,” Andrew said, his voice low enough for only Kurt to hear. With one last meaningful glance in Blaine’s direction, he took the hand that Toby was offering him, and left Kurt with his thoughts.

He watched the string quartet, hired to provide most of the evening’s entertainment, file back onto the small stage that had been set up in front of the HMag penthouse’s floor to ceiling windows. Wondering if Andrew was right, he downed a healthy mouthful of his fresh vodka-cranberry. Maybe… Maybe giving into this thing between him and Blaine, whatever the fuck it was, would be good for them. Blaine wanted it as well, that much he knew, and aside from the fact that it terrified him just a little bit, it could be beneficial for them both to just give into it and get it out of their systems.

 _It won’t be out of your system, though,_ chided a little voice in the back of his head. _You’ll only want more, because you’ve always been—_

“Shut up,” Kurt muttered, knocking back the rest of his drink in one and wiping his hand across his mouth just as the band started [the first song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44743374749) of the second half of their set to a round of applause.

“You owe me a dance, mister,” Blaine said into his ear, his warm breath smelling faintly of rum and his hand light on Kurt’s wrist. “Can’t have you propping up the bar all night long.”

“Next song, maybe,” Kurt said, trying to put it off long enough for the sudden rush of Dutch courage to fade away.

“You love this song; don’t even try to deny it,” Blaine said, cutting Kurt off before he’d even opened his mouth to refute. “And I know you have a super-secret thing for The Wanted, so just for tonight, skip the eye-rolling and come dance with me.”

Blaine’s eyes were imploring, hopeful in that puppy dog way that Kurt found nigh impossible to refuse, and his willpower slipped from his tenuous grasp quicker than sand. The beat kicked in as he hopped down from his stool and let Blaine lead him onto the dance floor where the rest of the guests were already gathering, dancing in couples and groups.

Kurt took a steadying breath when Blaine’s hands settled on his hips, swaying them in time with his own, and he raised his arms, resting his hands just over Blaine’s shoulders. Yes, this was fine; he could deal with this. This was a safe distance, and Blaine was smiling and happy, and the music was fantastic. Everything was fantastic.

And then Blaine leaned in, and every muscle in Kurt’s body tensed. “That guy by the end of the bar, the one in the corduroy shirt? He’s been checking you out all night,” he murmured next to Kurt’s ear. “Pretty hot, a good dancer…”

Slowly and in time with the song, Kurt turned them so that he could glance over Blaine’s shoulder at the man in question. Blaine was right; under the brightly spot-lit bar, he could see the guy watching him, though he didn’t appear to have the temerity to hold Kurt’s gaze longer than a couple of seconds before he was looking away. He was classically handsome, though perhaps a little strong in the jaw for Kurt’s taste, with thick, jet-black hair that had obviously been sculpted into an organized chaos.

“You and I don’t often find the same people attractive,” he mused, turning back to Blaine and unconsciously running his thumb down the column of Blaine’s neck.

“Not often, no. Maybe we should invite him back to the R.V. with us,” Blaine said, wiggling his eyebrows and holding Kurt’s gaze in a way that, had he not known better, would have made him think Blaine was serious.

“Nah,” Kurt said, “he’s not really my type.”

“Your type is _breathing,_ Kurt,” Blaine countered sardonically.

“Play nice,” Kurt said, batting his shoulder, and Blaine just smiled up at him and wrapped an arm around his waist, forcing them closer together like it was the most natural thing in the world. He could feel the heat from Blaine’s body pouring off him in waves, even through the layers of their clothes and the space between them, and it was close to intoxicating. Blaine reached behind his own neck to take Kurt’s right hand, his thumb pressing over Kurt’s lifeline and fingers wrapped around the back, and Kurt only just held back a yelp of surprise as Blaine dipped him in time with the strings that led into the second chorus.

Blaine righted them quickly, spinning Kurt out and then back in so fast that his feet could barely keep up, and it was only when the song grew quieter that it dimly registered that Blaine’s chest was pressed to Kurt’s back, their joined hands crossed over his waist. Kurt turned to face him, a hand pressed just over his heart, and they circled one another slowly. Blaine’s eyes were hooded and growing darker by the second, tongue flicking out to wet his lips, and all it would take would be for Kurt to lean down, close that last gap. Had this always been there, this nameless something, clamoring in the air between them and waiting to take hold? They could be within its grip in less than seconds.

Blaine’s fingertips ghosted the sides of Kurt’s neck in the same second that he caught Andrew watching them in his periphery, and it was all too much. Too much pressure, too much expectation, too much that he could fuck up completely if he just acted on his instincts. He closed his eyes, exhaled sharply through his nose, and took Blaine’s hands away.

_Things like this are never complicated, you know. It’s people that complicate them._

Andrew’s words ringing in his ears like a cheap taunt, Kurt did the only thing that he knew how to do: turned tail and walked away, all the way to the oh-thank-god-it’s-empty restroom where he locked himself into a stall with fumbling hands. It felt like his entire body was in revolt. The adrenalin that had started its typhoon through his bloodstream the very moment that Blaine had first touched him was chanting Blaine’s name, imprinting it into his every cell, and he couldn’t think, could only hear the roaring in his ears to a double-time beat of the song from which he’d run.

Feeling like the worst human being in all of history, Kurt closed the lid of the toilet and sank onto it with a shaky sigh, fisted his hands in his hair and squeezed his eyes shut until they stopped burning quite so fiercely. He felt ashamed and utterly defeated. What the fuck was he doing? Who had he become? He hadn’t always been this ridiculous slave to his _feelings—_ he was Kurt Hummel, for god’s sake. He was the one who fucked all the boys he wouldn’t in a million years trust to keep his heart safe, and in turn he wasn’t forced into keeping theirs. It was easy and fun and simple—three essential attributes which would never apply to this thing with Blaine, this intense thing that made Kurt feel wrong and sordid and, somewhere in amongst the locked file cabinet in the deepest recesses of his heart, also… Kind of right.

But Kurt had just gotten Blaine back after a barren year of separation. He couldn’t risk it, he just couldn’t.

No, he needed to get himself together, go back out to the party. Smile and play the gracious guest of two people who had quite literally run into him and repaid their folly with an enjoyable evening and free drinks. Tell Blaine that he’d had one too many of those free drinks and had needed to use the facilities. Put the game face back on and hope to god that it was convincing enough, when all he wanted to do was tip over sideways and lie on the ground until his heart stopped spinning.

“Deep breath, Kurt,” he whispered. He stood, unlocked the stall door and breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t see Blaine standing on the other side. He rolled his shoulders, fixed his hair in the tall mirror over the sinks, and with an adopted sanguinity he didn’t truly feel, left the restroom to face the music.

 

**Distance: 1,155 miles**

*

**Day 017: Wednesday 3rd October, 2012  
Peak and Shatter (Pennsylvania)**

_“How about_ Philadelphia? _It was one of the suggested additional movies to watch in Gay and Lesbian Studies, but I never got around to it.”_

_“I didn’t know you took Gay and Lesbian Studies.”_

_“A lot happened while you were gone, Blaine.”_

 

It was surprising just how much distance could be put between two people inside a confined space. When that distance was filled to the roof with overly-bright small talk that left not a single moment for silence, it became as the walls of a fortress, impenetrable and impassable, with no détente in sight.

Since their lost moment in the HMag penthouse, it seemed that Kurt was doing all he could possibly think of to act like everything was normal between them, when everything was as far from normal as it could be. To Blaine, it only felt like salt in the wound. In walking away from him, Kurt had made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want Blaine like Blaine wanted him, and that was fine. It was more than fine: it was great, and absolutely for the best. Blaine had been expecting some awkwardness, some avoidance, and some dancing around the issue.

What he hadn’t been expecting was Kurt to start acting like some maniac on acid, filling every single minute of their first day in Philadelphia with every possible thing he could apparently think of to do. They’d spent a few hours walking around the city, starting at the Random Tea & Curiosity Shop on 4th, then stopping to see the Liberty Bell and Dream Garden before catching a bus out to West Philadelphia to visit the Please Touch Museum, where they had ridden the carousel two horses apart.

By the time they had made it back to the R.V., Blaine was so exhausted that it was all he could do to shower before collapsing into bed, only noticing as he was finally drifting into the warm clutches of sleep that all of the lights in the rest of the vehicle were turned off and Kurt hadn’t slid in next to him.

Blaine had found him early the next morning, sipping coffee at the kitchen counter while he scrolled emails on his phone, any traces of his having slept on the pull-out couch already tucked away. Kurt had smiled at him like everything was fine, and sure, it was all just peachy. Honestly, though, Blaine was just pissed. He’d let his imagination run away with him yet again, and not only did it result in a sharp sting delivered directly to his heart, it had almost put his entire friendship with Kurt on the line. It was just a stupid crush, and he needed to get over it for both their sakes—and if he’d done it at fourteen, he could do it at twenty-two.

Both feeling the need for a more relaxed pace than the almost farcical nature of their previous day, they had settled onto the couch with only a few words exchanged, and watched _Philadelphia._ The anger that had been knotted up inside Blaine’s stomach only roiled more the further into the movie they got, and he could tell that Kurt was experiencing something similar by the way he immediately got up afterwards and went outside for some fresh air, despite their being parked in another Walmart lot.

When he’d come back, Kurt had driven them out to Longwood Gardens, where they had spent a while in a more companionable silence than they had shared in over a week. Finally, they’d delved into a complete deconstruction of the movie, debating issues upon which they’d long since established their stances to one another, but going over it all again anyway.

And now, on the way back to the Walmart with no real plans for what to do with their evening, Blaine could feel that the edge had worn off. The silence had morphed back into something comfortable rather than awkward, the radio station playing Springsteen and the sun dipping below the horizon in their wake.

Until his phone trilled in the cup holder, and he saw the name flashing on the display: _Dad._

Blaine had every intention of ignoring it, reasoning that he was driving and would just call his dad back later, even though he knew he wouldn’t. And then Kurt, who was sitting with the laptop in the chair behind the cab, asked innocuously, “Aren’t you gonna get that?”

With a sigh, Blaine swiped his thumb across the screen and raised the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“Blaine, hi. I was expecting your voicemail,” his dad said, and his cheerful tone already had Blaine feeling prickly. “I just wanted to let you know that I won’t have to work this weekend after all. The Nix case settled out of court like we were hoping, so we’ll have a couple days of real father-son time. I thought I could show you around D.C., how’s that sound?”

“Sounds great, Dad,” Blaine said, his teeth gritted and heart sinking. He’d been hoping to just get away with an evening at most. “Though you remember I have Kurt with me, right? So it won’t just be father-son time.”

“No, I know. Kurt’s always welcome, you know that. And actually, I wanted to ask you about sleeping arrangements, because Alison’s got two of the guest rooms all set up for you, or you can both stay in one if you’d—“

“We’ll be staying in the R.V.,” Blaine interrupted, and he tried not to feel the immediate regret at his harsh tone too keenly, adding, “I’m sorry Alison went to all that trouble.”

“Well… You know your stepmom; it was no trouble at all. And the driveway’s plenty big enough—“

“Dad, I’m driving so I should probably…”

“Right, of course, safety first. I’m—I’m excited to see you, Blaine.”

“You too.”

“Okay, I’ll see you Saturday. Love you, son.”

Blaine paused, the words almost spilling from his mouth automatically, but he bit them back. “Bye, Dad.”

Silence descended again, lasting the remaining ten minutes it took him to get them back to the Walmart lot, and no sooner had Blaine cut the engine than he was out of the cab. He took a deep, gulping breath of the fresh night air and leaned against the sun-warmed metal of the R.V., waiting until the churning in his gut subsided. Everywhere he turned there was tension, thick as the fog that rolled in off the ocean on cold mornings back in Maine, and it was threatening to overwhelm him if he didn’t just _do_ something, already. He needed to decompress, he just didn’t know how, and that was what got to him more than anything.

“I’d tell you to go smoke a cigarette, but I think we both know how that’d turn out,” Kurt said, leaning out of the open driver’s side door. “You okay?”

“He’s just so… Fucking oblivious, acting like we’re best friends,” Blaine spat. “Ugh. I just… I need to get laid.”

“Well, yeah,” Kurt said, climbing out of the cab and standing in front of Blaine with his hands in the pockets of his sinfully tight jeans. “So why don’t you?”

“Can we not have this conversation again?”

“You brought it up. Blaine, I’m serious, you don’t know what you’re missing. And I’ve seen the way you look at—“ Kurt stopped, cutting himself short, and didn’t seem quite able to meet Blaine’s eyes. _Oh, if only he’d just finish that sentence…_ “I’ve seen the way you look at some people. Is this some sort of internalized homophobia thing, are you ashamed, is that it?”

“No, I’m not ashamed. I’m out and proud, you know that.”

“Well, sure, but it’s not like you ever act on it. You’re not a robot, I mean… If that movie taught us anything, it’s that life’s too fucking short. Everyone has needs, Blaine.”

“And ‘needs’ are what got you kicked out of that bar when we were here the last time,” Blaine spat, and Kurt’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, you know I wouldn’t ever judge you for…”

“For getting around.”

“Kurt, I’m just… Look, sex complicates everything. Okay? I’ve seen it. I’ve _lived_ it,” Blaine said, the old guilt coming back to haunt him with a vengeance, and dammit, he thought he’d put all this shit behind him once and for all. “Sex is the reason that my entire family got ripped apart, and I don’t—I can’t—it was my fault, it was all my fault—“

“Blaine, hey—Blaine, look at me,” Kurt cut him off, both hands cupping his face and gently but firmly forcing Blaine to meet his eyes. “None of what happened between your parents—no, let me fucking finish. None of it was your fault, you have to know that. I’m sorry. Blaine, I’m sorry. Look… Okay, this is what we’re gonna do. We’re going to go back into the city, find the first bar we can, and get absolutely wasted.”

“Since when did that ever solve anything?” Blaine asked, though the argument was weak. A night outside his head actually sounded pretty good. He sighed and covered Kurt’s hands with his own, not wanting to lose the comforting touch just yet. “Okay. Okay, let’s do it. What’s the worst that could happen, right?”

 

“Ugh. I can’t believe I had to get all dressed up in the parking lot of a fucking Walmart,” Kurt griped as they stood outside the famous Woody’s Bar, surrounded by students and edging gradually closer to the front of the line. They were close enough to hear the music pounding from inside, something fast-paced and frenetic.

Blaine swept appraising eyes over Kurt’s outfit; a slim-fit pair of black dress slacks belted just above the hip paired with a deep purple shirt, sleeves rolled at the elbow, and a scooped-out black vest. The only accessory he wore was his black leather cuff, and it set off the rest of the ensemble perfectly. “You look great,” he said into Kurt’s ear, his voice low. _You look gorgeous, fantastic, breathtaking._ “Me, on the other hand…”

“Please, you look hot,” Kurt waved him off. Taking in his own short-sleeved white shirt, black skinny tie and teal jeans, Blaine reminded himself that he wasn’t there to pick up guys anyway. He was there to dance, to let himself loosen up and breathe.

When they reached the front of the line, they paid their $10 cover and went inside. The music was loud and got inside Blaine’s head immediately, and he drummed his fingers on the bar as they waited for their beers.

He lost Kurt to the crowd after four drinks and about half an hour of close-but-not-too-close dancing, and he was fine with being on his own, even though he spent a couple of songs here and there dancing with a few attractive but ultimately uninteresting strangers. The longer the evening wore on, the more relaxed and pliant he felt. Kurt had been right: this was exactly what he needed.

Arms raised up over his head as he swayed his hips amongst the crush of bodies in front of the giant equalizer lit up on the wall, Blaine grinned when the crowd cheered at the [next song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44743529290), and the atmosphere changed almost immediately. The crowd seemed to slow and speed up at the same time, couples moving against one another while the rest bounced along with the unrelentingly fast pace and looked around to find a partner—with its pounding beat and dirty bass line, this was a song made for grinding.

Blaine wasn’t surprised when he felt a warm body pressing into his back, fingertips dragging down the length of his raised arms, and he reveled in the contact, leaning into the touch and chasing for more. Bodies were packed tight around him, the beat pulsing through them, and he felt as if all of them were there simply to bear witness. He couldn't hear the moan he let out when he felt a mouth sucking and nipping at his neck but he felt it rumble up from deep in his chest, vibrating throughout his entire body. The stranger was pressed against him from head to toe and Blaine ground back in time with the beat. Arms wound tightly around him—the right all the way around his middle and the left a palm tight against his chest—and he reached back to bury his hand in the stranger's soft, thick hair, pulling him closer because the way he was worshipping Blaine's neck with his mouth was addictive in its filth.

Blaine opened his eyes and glanced down at the stranger's hands as they began loosening his tie and working open the buttons of his shirt, and just for a moment, he froze. As the song blended seamlessly through to a quieter, more intimate sounding song Blaine thought was called _[Midnight City](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44743742982),_ the lights came up only to drop straight back down. In the sudden flash, he caught the most fleeting glance of a black leather cuff wrapped around the stranger’s pale wrist, the sleeve of a purple shirt rolled to the elbow.

“Dance with me, Blaine, come on,” Kurt said, the words cutting straight through the light beer haze that fogged Blaine’s mind. He let out another moan as Kurt traced his tongue along the outer shell of his ear and nipped at the lobe, and couldn’t help melting back into Kurt’s body. “Been watching you all night; everyone has. You’re so fucking hot…”

Kurt wrapped himself around Blaine completely, seemingly oblivious to everything that wasn't the feeling of Blaine's body against his own. He nudged Blaine's thighs apart, taking almost all of his weight and swaying them from side to side in time with the sudden and insane beat of the chorus.

“I want you so fucking badly; you don’t even know how much. God, they’ve all been watching you and wanting a piece of you, but you’re mine. You’re mine…”

Eyes closed and lips bitten to the quick, Blaine ground down onto Kurt's thigh, tightening his grip on Kurt’s hair to keep him there, keep him doing exactly this because this was... This was...

It wasn't enough. Maybe there would never be enough. But there was only one way to tell, and Kurt had moved from his ear down to his neck, still muttering words into his skin that Blaine could no longer hear, only feel the shapes of. Somewhere in his mind it dimly registered that Kurt was hard against him, moaning into the hollow of his neck with hot breath that smelled like whiskey. And it really, really wasn’t enough—Blaine _wanted,_ felt buoyed up with the confidence to not only demand but to take and have and keep it all locked inside some warm and secret place.

Already aching with need and anticipation, he turned around and looked deep into Kurt’s eyes, thumbing over Kurt’s cheekbone and then taking him by the hand.

Getting back to the R.V.—thankfully parked just up the street—was a blur of shivers in the considerably cooler night air, rushed footsteps and Kurt's arm around his waist, teeth nipping at his earlobe every so often. It took almost everything he had to keep from pushing Kurt into a doorway and having his way, right there where anybody could see.

When Kurt finally stepped into his space in the privacy of the R.V.'s bedroom, his stare deep and searching, Blaine said nothing. Didn't even blink, just yanked his tie over his head and went to work on the buttons of his shirt. Kurt followed the motion with his pupils blown and a flick of his tongue that made him look ravenous. He hooked two fingers into Blaine's belt and pulled him past the mile-sized inches left between them, replacing Blaine's fumbling hands with his own, strong and sure, and that was what bridged the final gap in Blaine's synapses. He was wanted, and it was Kurt that wanted him—a weight was finally lifted from his shoulders and he let himself fall back onto the bed, Kurt following in the next heartbeat.

He hovered over Blaine for a moment, breathing hard as he pushed the shirt from Blaine's shoulders, and there was a single, suspended moment where he just stared at Blaine's parted lips, and then leaned down, down, past Blaine's mouth and sucked hard onto his pulse point.

Seconds passed that felt slower than molasses, the ringing in Blaine’s ears still holding remnants of the beats to which they’d danced and touched and lost themselves. One moment, Kurt was all he could feel, all around him, and in the next moment there was no warm and firm body pinning him; instead there were hands divesting him of his jeans and underwear in one quick sweep and tossing them over the side of the bed.

Heavily, Kurt dropped to his knees and slid his arms under Blaine's thighs, thumbs hooking around and pressing into his hipbones as he gripped Blaine's sides and yanked him to the edge of the bed. Blaine swore he could feel the slightest stutter in Kurt's pulse against his skin just before Kurt licked up the underside of his cock and sank his mouth over the head, his eyes locked on Blaine’s.

“God, your _mouth,”_ he breathed, descending into a moan at Kurt’s ensuing dark chuckle, followed by the quick raking sound of a zipper being undone. Wet heat surrounded him and it was all Blaine could do to hold back from tumbling and disappearing inside of it all, nothing about it measured or patient, instead the inevitable boiling point of a gradually heating pot. It was too much, and he could feel the movement of Kurt’s arm against his leg as he jerked himself off in tandem with working Blaine over like he was made for it. The thought only drove Blaine even further lost, spiraling down into the fuzzy insanity and tingling warmth that he could feel torpidly crawling up from the base of his spine.

Blaine pulled at Kurt's hair when he felt himself getting closer, tugged harder and harder to let him know, because he couldn't say his name. He couldn't let those four letters slip from his mouth because then this would become something real, something that with all of the facets of his inebriated state, he was so much less than equipped to deal with. Kurt shook his head slightly, humming around him with his fingernails digging painfully into the back of Blaine’s hip, and Blaine jolted upwards with a cut-off groan.

He threw an arm across his eyes and pressed, pressed until yellow ink blossomed behind his eyelids like oil on water and he came harder than he ever had in his life, crying out and digging his fingers into the mattress. Kurt took it all, working him through it with his own muffled moan of arrival, until finally he pulled off with a lewd pop and dropped his forehead to rest on the inside of Blaine’s thigh, warm breath fanning over the sensitive skin there.

“Fuck,” Blaine managed as Kurt stood, already tucking himself back into his boxer briefs but leaving his pants undone. His lips were the color of a kiss they hadn’t shared. Blaine sat up and forward, hooking his fingers beneath the vest that Kurt still wore, and pulled limply. “Come here.”

“Blaine, I—“

“Just come here.”

Tentatively and without meeting Blaine’s eyes, Kurt climbed onto the bed and they crawled up the length of it together. Lying down, Kurt pressed his damp forehead against Blaine’s neck, brushed a single kiss against his collarbone and exhaled shakily.

They were silent, and minutes was all it took for Kurt to fall asleep. Blaine wasn’t as lucky, staring up at the ceiling until the edges of his vision blurred, and eventually he switched off the bedside lamp, wondering if he’d find answers swathed in darkness instead.

He didn’t.

 

**Distance: 1,323 miles**

*

**Day 018: Thursday 4th October, 2012  
Wreckage (Delaware)**

_“I’ll try anything once.”_

_“Except sex.”_

_“And isn’t that the truth? Alright,_ Dead Poet’s Society _it is.”_

 

Kurt surfaced slowly.

At first he felt the body-warmed cotton beneath his fingers and then skin, smooth and heated and there. Then came the deep satiation, the unfettered relaxation pooled inside every muscle, and the quiet need to stretch. It was all chased by the smacking of lips, the taste of stale alcohol and—tequila shots? Fries, maybe? He opened his eyes slowly, searching out daylight between the slats of the blind, but it was still mostly dark. Turning his head, he took in the sight of Blaine beneath the covers, his white shirt wrinkled and unbuttoned. He looked more relaxed than Kurt had seen him in a long while, and though things between them were still a little strained and he hadn’t exactly intended on them sharing the bed again so soon, he couldn’t help but smile.

Slowly, so as not to disturb him, Kurt stretched himself out of bed and retrieved a t-shirt, a soft hoodie, and his comfiest pair of sweatpants from the drawers at the end of the bed. He left the small bedroom, sliding the door closed behind him, and went about his usual morning routine, skipping the shower as he was craving pancakes and would want to work them off afterwards.

He was sitting in the driver’s seat, sipping from a wetly steaming mug of French roast and watching the sunrise break through cloud after cloud when he realized that they were still in the middle of the city and should probably get an early start if they didn’t want to get caught in the morning rush hour, all infuriating start-and-stop until they hit the highway. What time had they even gotten back to the R.V.? Kurt couldn’t remember anything after catching glimpses of Blaine dancing in front of the equalizer through the crowd, but he knew it must have been late, and now it was barely seven-fifteen.

Deciding to let Blaine sleep, Kurt plucked the set of keys from the hook under the kitchen cabinets and soon enough, he was on the road.

“Crap,” he muttered when he reached down to turn on his iPod and realized that it was still docked on the table in the living area. Shaking his head, he scanned through radio stations until he found one claiming to be the premier Philadelphia eclectic and alternative station. As Massive Attack’s [_Teardrop_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/44743916827) filled the cab, its repetitive beat and dark, almost foreboding piano refrain wrapping around him, Kurt tried to eschew the sense that something wasn’t quite right as it settled upon his shoulders.

When Blaine finally appeared an hour later, bleary-eyed and yawning as he sank into the passenger seat, he was wearing the same clothes as the night before and had his shirt buttoned only halfway up. Kurt shot him a brief smile, turning down the volume on the radio, and forced himself not to let his eyes linger on the smattering of dark hair on Blaine’s chest.

“You know, I really like this route we’re taking. Gets us out of driving all the way across Pennsylvania,” Kurt said.

“Small mercies.”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Fine. Where are we?”

“About five minutes outside Smyrna. I figured we could find someplace for breakfast, because I’m craving pancakes like no other.”

Blaine snorted, shook his head and looked out of the window at the other cars on the highway.

“What’s with you? Are you hungover?”

“Do you remember anything that happened last night?” Blaine asked evenly.

“Not really,” Kurt said slowly, a horrible thought occurring to him as he realized—he was craving pancakes. He only ever wanted pancakes after sex—and Blaine knew that as well as he did. “Oh god, did it happen again? I hooked up with some stranger, didn’t I? Fuck.”

“No, Kurt. You didn’t hook up with some stranger,” Blaine replied, his tone mild and controlled. Kurt breathed a sigh of relief—not only did he not want to be putting Blaine in that situation again, he really didn’t want to be hooking up with strangers, particularly when he knew any hookup would be merely an unsatisfying substitute for what he really wanted, and really couldn’t have.

“Thank god.”

“Yeah. Where’s the aspirin?”

“In the bathroom,” Kurt said as Blaine passed by, and smiled to himself a little—Blaine was always grouchy the morning after a night out, at least until he’d eaten.

Kurt, on the other hand, was in such a good mood that his inexplicable craving didn’t even occur to him again until he was seated opposite Blaine inside Smyrna Diner, enjoying the spacious yet homey throwback feel of the place as he perused the breakfast menu. Blaine had taken only a cursory glance at his own before slumping in his seat and turning to watch the morning drizzle pit-pit-pattering against the windows, and when Kurt began to sense that edge of tension creeping back in, he ordered an egg white omelet and home fries.

Something felt very, very wrong, and it wasn’t until they had driven the rest of the way to Rehoboth Beach and parked by the Indian River Marina that Kurt realized why.

He was on the couch, ear buds in with his iPod on shuffle as he checked out the blogs of the few followers he had gained since his last video diary. Blaine stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips, and Kurt glanced up once, twice, and froze in his seat: on the back of Blaine’s left hip were four red, crescent-shaped marks.

 _Pushing through the crush of bodies around him, needing to get to Blaine and show him how much he was wanted, give him everything he deserved. Moving against him, with him, arousal flaring sharp as he lavished attention on Blaine’s tanned skin; wanting to groan every time he brushed against the stubble graze of his jaw. Hard, heavy, hot flesh on his tongue and himself in hand; wanting to cry at the beauty of the release;_ finally, finally, finally. _Blaine’s imploring eyes; curling into his warm body with an arm holding him close and then—_

Kurt shot to his feet and swallowed convulsively, panic rising up in his throat like bile. He had—they had… Oh, god.

He didn’t pause, didn’t so much as blink, just took his iPod and ran, the R.V.’s side door banging shut behind him as he took off towards the north end of the marina. He was wearing the wrong shoes for running, didn’t even really own a pair of running shoes, that was Blaine’s thing—Blaine, whom Kurt had sucked off without a thought for what he was doing, selfish, idiot, he’d ruined everything, and he wanted to scream when [the song changed](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/46964084845) and Mumford & Sons were telling him he really fucked it up because he had, hadn’t he? He’d fucked everything up completely, they wouldn’t recover from this, _it wasn’t supposed to be like this, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this—_ had he even _kissed_ Blaine before he had broken every unwritten rule between them?

_Take, take, take it all, just like you always do, but not from him, never from him because he deserves so much better—_

“Kurt!”

His feet pounded harder on the uneven terrain, one of his ear buds slipped from his ear but he didn’t care, just ran faster along the trail until the loop took him out to the spit of beach lining the shore, the sand little more than fine, weather-worn stones and pebbles and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think because it was all around him, the damage he’d done to them, and he could still taste—

“Kurt, stop!”

The rain was pouring and Kurt was freezing in just his t-shirt and sweats but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t do anything other than run from what he’d done because maybe if he got far enough away from it, put enough distance there that it was nothing more than a passing blip on the horizon of his mind then he could ignore it, get past it, act like it never even happened in the first place, and then Blaine was drawing level with him, taking his arm and yanking him to a stop.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Kurt,” Blaine panted, hands on his thighs, and now that Blaine was in front of him, looking at him like he was utterly insane, Kurt truly felt it. “Ever thought about trying out for the Olympics? What the fuck _was_ that?”

With shaking hands, Kurt pulled the remaining ear bud from his ear and turned off his iPod, winding the cord around it to give himself a few precious seconds to try and compose himself. It didn’t work; it only made him feel the cold of the rain pelting at him with full force, and he trembled uncontrollably.

“Kurt, _look at me,”_ Blaine instructed him firmly, taking him by the shoulders and his hands were _burning,_ and Kurt could feel Blaine’s fingers gripped in his hair all over again.

“I’ve fucked everything up, haven’t I?”

“Kurt, no, what are you talking about?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember what happened, Blaine. You weren’t even half as drunk as I was.”

Blaine took a breath and exhaled through his nose, shook his head and shivered when rivulets of water trailed free of his curls. “Of course I remember, I—I just…” he trailed off, scrubbing a hand over his face, and Kurt wished and hoped and prayed that Blaine wasn’t about to ask if being drunk was the only reason he did it, if he’d meant even one second of it, because those were dangerous questions with even more dangerous answers.

“Just what?”

“Look, let’s be honest, Kurt…” Blaine trailed off, and Kurt took a breath. After a long pause, Blaine cocked his head to the side, quirked his eyebrows and grinned. “I’ve got _moves.”_

And just like that, the tension split and cracked and shattered. Kurt bit his lip.

“Such a dork,” he muttered, and the ground stopped moving beneath his feet.

“Chalk it up to booze, temporary insanity, whatever you want. Let’s just forget about it, okay?” Blaine asked.

With a deep, shuddering breath, Kurt nodded gratefully—he was off the hook even though that voice in the back of his mind that was growing louder with each passing day was telling him that he didn’t want to be let off the hook at all. “You’re freezing.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

Wordlessly, Blaine shucked off his leather jacket and tucked it around Kurt’s shoulders. It smelled like rain and spice and home.

“Come on. What do we do when it rains?” Blaine prompted him. “We…”

“We shop,” Kurt answered, rolling his eyes as they turned to retrace their footsteps back along the trail.

“A little bird told me that there’s a great outlet mall nearby. And Kurt, did you know that in Delaware, you don’t pay sales tax?”

“Why no, Blaine, I didn’t know that,” Kurt joked back with a giggle, and this—this was good. This was who they were: best friends who laughed and had fun and were there for one another no matter what, who they had been for sixteen years and would continue to be. They would stay that way, because it was who they were to one another, and nothing more—Kurt would make sure of it.

 

**Distance: 1,451 miles**

*

[Kurt's Blog](http://100daysofkurt.tumblr.com) | [Blaine's Blog](http://100daysofblaine.tumblr.com) | [The Music](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 021: Sunday 7th October, 2012  
Tsunami (Maryland)**

_“Does it even count if only one scene of the movie was filmed there, though?”_

_“Kurt, it’s_ Hairspray. _Of course it counts.”_

_“If you say so…”_

 

“Are you really sure about my Halloween costume?” Blaine asked as he idly plucked scales, shaking out his hand every now and then. He hadn’t played seriously in nearly two weeks, and though his fingertips were aching as new calluses blossomed on top of the old ones, the feeling of the black cocobolo and white spruce of his father’s Baranik Meridian in his hands was like undiluted magic.

Kurt glanced up from the crate of vinyl records he was flicking through, seated on the rich crimson overstuffed couch that stretched along the opposite wall of the music room in the Andersons’ basement, where they had been since shortly after a surprisingly easy and pleasant dinner with Blaine’s father and stepmother, Alison. Surprisingly easy and pleasant seemed to be the theme of the dinner, and Blaine had caught himself wondering numerous times throughout the day when the other shoe was going to drop.

“Why? That costume is fabulous,” Kurt said. “Much better than your original idea of us going as a tube of lube and a condom. I mean, _really.”_

“April told me it made me look like Elmo at a gay bar,” Blaine replied.

“She’s just jealous that she doesn’t get to wear a Kurt Hummel original, too,” Kurt said lightly, directing his gaze back to the LPs. “Besides, why are you worrying about Halloween now? It’s weeks away. Unless—oh, you really _are_ unsure about your costume, aren’t you?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. You know I love my costume. I don’t know; it’s just been bugging me ever since she said it.”

“Well, you could always go with the Freddie Mercury instead. But don’t think I don’t know exactly what you’re doing,” Kurt said lightly, and as he reached the last LP in the crate he flipped them back into place and looked Blaine in the eye, bracing his hands on either side of the crate’s plastic edges. “You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“Where you nit-pick out all the little things that you _think_ are wrong in order to avoid the big thing that’s _actually_ wrong.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Blaine muttered to the guitar, focusing back on the grain of the wood beneath its perfect layer of varnish.

“Don’t you dare give me that, Blaine Devon Anderson. There’s obviously something that you’re not dealing with, and you and I both know what it is,” Kurt said. “So you’re going to sing it out, and I’m going to listen, and then we’re going to try and figure it out together. Deal?”

Blaine worried the inside of his cheek for a moment or two, then resettled the guitar across his lap and dropped one foot from the stool’s footrest to the heavy rug. Silently, he ran his left hand along the neck of the guitar and found a chord, and retrieved a plectrum from the narrow, chest-height shelf bar that ran the length of the room. He strummed the guitar once, the pitch and timbre rich and utterly perfect, and Blaine knew immediately [the song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/46964305473) that he needed to sing: the song that had been looping in the back of his mind all day, and to which Kurt had introduced him in the early hours of a windswept morning almost seven years earlier.

He began to strum, quietly at first, then louder as he grew more sure of himself, and after the first few bars of swallowing down the constriction in his throat, he did the only thing he’d ever truly known to do when it all got too much.

 _“Son, what have you done? You’re caught by the river, you’re coming undone,”_ he sang, feeling Kurt’s eyes on him and letting his own voice carry him to the relief of escape, if only for six minutes of eight-bar measures. _“You and I were so full of love and hope. Would you give it all up now? Would you give in just to spite them all?”_

And that was the real crux of the matter: forgive or forget? The problem was that it wasn’t just his father that Blaine needed to forgive—it was also himself. Logically, he knew that his coming out to his parents wasn’t the reason for their divorce. It was just hard to believe it.

The song was over too quickly, the last strains of it swallowed in the soundproofing panels that covered the walls, and Kurt gently cleared his throat.

“When you’re at a crime scene, and you’re looking for the guilty one, where do they say you should look first?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“You look for the person running away, Blaine.”

“Okay…”

“And isn’t that exactly what you’ve done ever since it happened?” Kurt asked, his voice forgiving but firm. “You’ve been punishing your father for something he did seven years ago because it was too big for you to process at the time, but since then it’s only gotten bigger and now you’re just too scared to open the box you shoved it into. Look, he can’t undo it. But with all his heart, he’s sorry. I can see it in his eyes, and you would too if you just took the time to look.”

Kurt moved closer, stopping just before Blaine and laying his palm in the hollow of his neck; Blaine almost leaned into the touch, but let the hesitancy have him instead.

“Don’t waste the relationships that you _could_ have, Blaine,” Kurt said softly, and he swallowed thickly as his thumb rubbed absently just beneath Blaine’s jaw. “Not all of us get that chance.”

“You boys having fun down there?”

Blaine’s head whipped towards the door to the basement and the sound of his father’s voice. He froze, all at once feeling like he’d been backed into a corner while also knowing that Kurt was right. He should have stopped running years ago, but had never quite figured out what to do with the momentum.

“Yeah, Dad,” he called out, keeping his voice light. Kurt’s hand was gone from his neck, and Blaine avoided his eyes.

There was a beat of silence followed by footsteps padding softly down the carpeted stairs.

“You mind if I join in?” George asked as he poked his head through the door. “I’ve been meaning to get down here again for a while.”

“You know, I think I might go find Alison. She mentioned her roses earlier, and Carole’s always looking for gardening tips,” Kurt said quickly, and with one last sharp glance at Blaine, made a hasty exit.

George stepped fully into the room and cleared his throat, gesturing to the guitar. “You play even better than the last time I heard you.”

“Thanks,” Blaine said, unable to dampen the small thrill in his chest at his father’s proud tone, and it made him want to tell him more, tell him everything. “I was, um—I had a band in college.”

“Yeah? Let me guess, you were the rock-star front man,” George said knowingly as he seated himself where Kurt had been sitting only a minute earlier.

“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but—yeah, I sang and played guitar,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “We actually had our last gig together at The Cannery, the day before Kurt and I left.”

“I bet that place still looks exactly the same.”

“Same gnarly old fishers nursing beers under the marlin in the corner.”

George chuckled, and things were easy… And Blaine should have known it was too good to last.

“That was always your mom’s favorite place, and I could never figure out why. How’s she doing, now?”

A body-wide sweep of tension; Blaine tried not to outwardly bristle. “She’s fine,” he said.

“Did I hear that she just got a promotion?” George asked.

It was nothing. It was _small talk._ And yet Blaine could feel the old anger dredging itself up, churning in his gut and rising, rising, rising, high enough to flood and overwhelm the dam he’d carefully and painstakingly constructed to protect himself from it.

“Yep. Three weeks before we left.”

“Well, that’s fantastic! How did you celebrate?”

“Dinner at The War Horse.”

“Ah, another favorite,” George said, a note of wistful nostalgia laced throughout his tone before he grew serious, eyebrows drawn down over his eyes. He leaned forward in his seat slightly and asked, “And is she doing alright since your grandfather passed?”

“Do you mean, ‘Is she back on the meds?’” Blaine asked hotly, setting the guitar deliberately in its stand and staring his father square in the eye. “Because no, she’s not. She doesn’t need them anymore.”

“Well, that’s—that’s good to hear,” came the mollified reply. “And how was the, uh… The service? I would have liked to have been there to pay my respects, but—“

“Grandpa wouldn’t have wanted them even if you’d been invited to pay them,” Blaine cut him off, and the room went very still.

“Blaine, there’s no need to be so rude,” George said, his steely tone one that would usually have Blaine backing down, but this time it only fueled the hot wash of anger roiling in the pit of Blaine’s stomach.

“Dad, I’m not a child anymore. You can’t just tell me I’m being rude every time I tell you something that you don’t want to hear.”

“Now wait just a minute—“

“No. No, I won’t. I’m an adult now—“

“You don’t look like much of an adult to me—“

“And that’s because you ran away! You never got to see me become an adult because you weren’t _there_ to see it! You cheated on Mom, and then you ran away because you couldn’t deal with the consequences when she found out, and I bet you don’t even have any idea of how bad it got, how she lost all of her friends, how she had a psychotic break while you were living it up with your secretary in fucking _Rockland—“_

“Blaine, stop,” Kurt’s voice came from the doorway, and Blaine whipped his head around at the sudden intrusion, not even having realized that he’d jumped to his feet. Kurt moved to step forward, but Blaine held up his hand.

“No, he needs to hear this,” he said quietly, and turned back to his father, who was sitting with the fingers and thumb of one hand stretched across his brow, his face mostly hidden from view. He continued, in a disarmingly low and controlled voice, “Dad, what you did almost killed her. I lived at Kurt’s house for six months of sophomore year while they kept her in that place full of crazy people to make sure that she wouldn’t try to kill herself again, and where were you? Why didn’t you come back?”

“I was too ashamed.” His father’s voice was gravel-rough and bitten off. “Blaine, there’s nothing I can do now that will fix what I did to both of you, but I’m so sorry.”

“Not good enough,” Blaine said, shaking his head. “I was ashamed of you too, but I still needed you. I _hated_ you because of how much I still needed you, even after you broke everything.”

And in the silence that followed, Blaine pushed past Kurt and ran from the room without so much as a backward glance, even when Kurt called after him. He took the stairs two at a time and made his way through the kitchen where Alison had poured them lemonade that afternoon. Passing through the wide archway into the grand foyer, Blaine’s bare feet slapped against the smooth maple wood flooring and the marble of the wide, curving staircase that served as the foyer’s focal point.

Before long, he had found his way to the guest room where he had left his things, fully aware of the fact that what he was doing entirely contradicted adult behavior. The door slammed shut behind him and he mentally cursed himself for having brought everything inside from the R.V. before really having a true hold on the temperature between himself and his father. He stood at the foot of the bed for a moment, fists opening and closing, and then gave in to the urge and collapsed face first on top of the duvet.

He lay there for hours, picking the day apart into its component minutiae as he watched the muted glow of the lanterns outside the window. Wind howled wildly outside the window, the sound of it like it was being blown across the lip of a beer bottle, and he could only just hear the music playing quietly from his laptop, on the floor by the side of the bed.

The day had washed over him in bright pockets of time that had burned pictures into his mind’s eye with flashbulb precision: the scent of Old Spice that accompanied the first hug he had shared with his father in years; George nervously clearing his throat and suggesting a tour of the house; Kurt’s thrilled expression when Blaine agreed that it would be a shame to waste such beautifully-appointed guest rooms; Alison’s bright and pleased smile as she shooed all three of ‘her boys’ out the door for an afternoon drink, saying she had errands to run and that they should enjoy a guys’ afternoon; a window table at Frazier’s On The Avenue, and the startling amber clarity of his Heritage Bourbon juxtaposed against the swirling fog of Kurt’s Grey Goose martini as his dad sipped an orange juice; laughing until his sides hurt and his dad’s eyes were streaming at one of Kurt’s perfectly timed Eddie Izzard references on the way back from the bar; giggling awkwardly around the dinner table at Alison’s misapprehension that he and Kurt were an item.

The entire day, all of the smiles and the easy laughter, the renewed faith he’d felt blossoming in some deep and forgotten place… It all felt like a gargantuan joke had been played on him, and that the person behind it had taken an ice cream scoop to his insides, gouging out every last shred of his essence until nothing but a husk was left behind.

 _Why isn’t this more satisfying?_ Blaine thought. _I’ve been waiting years to say all of this to him. Now what?_

He changed into his pajamas and attempted to write an entry on his blog; he tried counting sheep. He even briefly considered jerking off to work out his frustration before thinking better of it—none of it was any use. Time dragged on by the second, and Blaine rolled onto his back, pillowing his head on his arms and counting the number of tiles from the wall to the small chandelier and back again.

The soft cotton of the sheets was too hot against Blaine’s skin, and they tangled around his legs as he rolled onto his side in search of a cooler and more comfortable position. He wasn’t even angry anymore, not really. The anger had been overtaken by a deep and encompassing sadness instead, one that took all its joy from reminding Blaine of everything he had forgotten. It had been so easy to hold onto the anger for so long that the good things had slipped his mind—his dad’s pride at the things Blaine had accomplished, his ever-present and slightly ridiculous sense of humor that found the funny in almost everything, even his deep and abiding love for throwing Monty Python quotes into everyday conversation. It had all fallen by the wayside. He had _missed_ his father, and it was hitting him all at once just how much.

Blaine had been expecting two days of a bite-swollen tongue and an awkward knot in his throat, and instead, he’d gotten his dad back—right before he caused the chasm to widen further, ultimately unnecessarily. He should have moved on from this long ago—after all, in their own separate ways, both of his parents had—but for so many years he had been holding onto the anger and loss and utter heartbreak that it was burned into his skin; it had become part of who he was, and he was scared of finding out who he would be without it. Most of all, Blaine was scared that he would one day become his father, that he would end up breaking someone so badly that there was no recovering. He was like his father in a lot of ways—they shared the same sense of humor, the same infatuation and affinity with people, the same practical way of looking at things. Why should matters of the heart—and heartbreak—be any different?

 _Tap-tap-tap,_ came the knocks on the door, and Blaine threw back the covers. He straightened his pajamas and crossed the room, cracking open the door to see Kurt standing before him with his arms crossed over his chest. They regarded one another for a long moment, and within a split-second of Blaine starting to speak, Kurt stepped forward and placed his hand over Blaine’s mouth. Their faces were only centimeters apart and a moment had Blaine suspended, heart racing in his chest and blood rushing in his ears.

“Aren’t you tired, yet?” Kurt asked, his eyes soft around the edges. After a pause, Blaine nodded, inhaling deeply and stepping back.

“Is anyone still awake?” he asked.

“Alison went to bed, but your dad’s still out on the lanai,” Kurt said, leaning against the doorframe and looking down at Blaine. “As proud as I was of you for using your words earlier, I think—“

“I know,” Blaine cut him off, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders. “I know I have to fix this.”

Kurt nodded, and stepped aside. “I’m going to bed, but I’ll be up for a while if you want to talk afterwards, okay? Maybe we could watch our movie.”

Blaine gave him a tight, crooked smile, murmured a thank you, and made his way downstairs. As promised, he found his father sitting in the middle of the curving taupe couch, one socked foot resting on the upholstered top of the coffee table. Blaine stood awkwardly half in, half out of the doorway out onto the lanai and looked at his father—really looked at the man before him, with his usually tidy salt-and-pepper hair slightly mussed, his eyes bloodshot and beset by dark circles, and the wrong kind of lines around his mouth. He looked more tired than Blaine felt.

Slowly, he moved toward the end of the couch and perched on the arm. He glanced out over backlit silhouettes of the roses bordering the waist-height wall separating the lanai from the yard, and searched for the words.

George sat straight and leaned forward, forearms resting along his thighs and his fingers splayed. Cautiously, he said, “Son, about what happened downstairs. Everything you said—“

“Dad, wait,” Blaine interrupted, turning fully to his father but not yet able to meet his eyes. “I’m—really sorry. I completely embarrassed myself, and I was unforgivably rude to you and Alison… I usually have better manners than that, I swear.”

“Blaine, the fact is that I let you down in the worst way a father can let his son down. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me the most, and I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

“I—you know, I thought it would feel really great to finally get all of it out, but…” Blaine trailed off, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth and scrubbing his hand across the back of his neck. “But things are actually… Things are good now, for both of you. Mom has Stephen, and you have Alison, and I feel like I just watched a video of myself as a toddler throwing a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store.”

“You had every right,” George said gently, and Blaine shook his head.

“No. No, what I said earlier was right. I’m not a kid anymore, so I should stop acting like one.”

Blaine knew that his father couldn’t disagree, and he didn’t, silence falling heavily between them like a curtain, tapestry-thick. But he also knew that his father desperately wanted to fix what he’d rendered asunder, and Blaine was finally beginning to admit to himself that it was a desire they shared.

“Do you miss being home?” George asked, the question throwing Blaine off and causing him to consider it for a moment.

“No. Brunswick, it… Never really felt like home, not even when—when things were good. Before,” Blaine said, the words sounding stilted and awkward and true.

“Where _does_ feel like home?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“Well, whether you use it or not, you’ve always got a home here,” George said, and Blaine’s throat closed. “Do you think we could start fresh?”

Blaine shook his head, glancing down at the front of his threadbare Bowdoin tee and blinking back the prickle. “No. But—“ Blaine stopped, looked up to meet his father’s gaze, and said, “I think we can move forward.”

 

**Distance: 1,451 miles**

*

**Day 022: Monday 8th October, 2012  
Black Waltz (Virginia)**

_“I know I had a bad reaction to it the first time, but I was only fourteen.”_

_“A census taker tried to test me once. I ate his liver, with some—“_

_“Blaine, finish that sentence at your own peril.”_

 

“Huh. I guess things really did change while I was in London,” Blaine said, sitting back in his seat. “You used to hate Rihanna.”

“Still do,” Kurt replied through gritted teeth.

“Then why are we listening to _[Shut Up And Drive](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/49172436291)?”_ Blaine asked. “Were you going for irony?”

“I didn’t even notice,” Kurt said. It was true—Blaine had spent most of the song with his head and the upper half of his torso hanging out of the passenger side window like an overgrown puppy getting his first ride in a car, and while Kurt had to inwardly admit that he was divertingly appreciative of the view, his grip on the steering wheel was only now loosening as Blaine rolled his window two thirds of the way back up. “Skip it?”

“Definitely,” Blaine said, and reached forward to switch to the next song on shuffle.

Kurt smiled faintly after the first few seconds that it took him to recognize Radical Face’s _[Welcome Home](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/49172590810),_ the quiet and atmospheric sounds of soft wind chimes underscoring the relaxed and low strumming of an acoustic guitar. “Much better.”

“Clouds are coming up on us,” Blaine murmured, eyes trained on his wing mirror. “Do you think we’ll outrun them?”

Kurt glanced into his mirror at the dark plumes gaining on the azure that stretched out above them, and shook his head. “We might’ve if you hadn’t insisted on using a map instead of the GPS.”

“Hey, you were the one who wanted to drive when this was my big surprise for you,” Blaine countered, holding his hands up. “At least we’re nearly there.”

“What’s in Luray, anyway?” Kurt asked, taking in the land surrounding the highway that would in the coming months become winter scrub, and the white siding of the farmhouse-style homes beyond it.

“Just keep following the road,” Blaine said, gesturing ahead. “And believe me, you’re going to love it. Coop and I made our parents take us, like, once a month. We used to run around the place pretending we were Indiana Jones. Well—Cooper was Indiana Jones, I was always his sidekick.”

Kurt bit the inside of his cheek and schooled his expression—Blaine had always been a little touchy about being in his older brother’s shadow, though Kurt knew that despite his level of self-involvement, Cooper generally meant well. “So it’s somewhere you can have adventures, then.”

“The best adventures.”

“And Indiana Jones generally preferred running around jungles and caves…” Kurt trailed off, a horrible thought forming itself from the jumbled mess that had taken up residence in his mind somewhere in Delaware. “Last time I checked, there were no jungles in Virginia.”

“Turn right.”

“Blaine, where—“ Kurt abruptly fell silent as he pulled the R.V. to a stop at the red light before the turning. He leaned forward over the steering wheel and looked disbelievingly at the tall green sign topped with something resembling a stout, misshapen dog bone, its white letters proclaiming ‘Luray Caverns.’ “Seriously?”

Blaine didn’t even seem to be listening, rather he was grinning out of the window like someone possessed, looking giddy with the joy of being somewhere that Kurt realized represented only good things. As the light turned green and Kurt slowly swung the R.V. to the right, Blaine bounced once in his seat and shot Kurt a radiant smile.

“Does it really feel _that_ good to be back?” Kurt asked.

“It really does,” Blaine said, leaning so far forward over the dashboard that his seatbelt locked. “You’ll come exploring with me, right?”

“Just so long as I don’t have to wear a fedora,” Kurt answered, worrying his lip and hoping against hope that whatever tour upon which they were about to embark didn’t involve episodes of total darkness. “I’m not nearly swarthy enough to rock that look.”

Blaine laughed at that, and carried on smiling as they parked and made their way past the tall walls of the Garden Maze and into the visitor’s center. Once he had handed over their tickets and signed them in with no small measure of glee, all of which Kurt observed with a half-amused, half-trepid smile, they were met by a girl who looked to be no older than a college freshman. Over a plain white button-down tucked into a pair of khakis, she wore a hunter green blazer, the chest pocket branded with ‘Luray Caverns’ above the tagline, _what will you discover?_ Kurt simply hoped he would discover the way out or, failing that, the gift shop. At the very least he could buy Blaine something suitably tacky and obnoxious as punishment for dragging him into the midst of all this nature.

“Hi, guys! I’m Jen,” the guide introduced herself, her long brown ponytail swinging from side to side as she looked between them before balancing her clipboard on her hip to shake each of their hands in turn.

“I’m Blaine, and this is Kurt,” Blaine provided, shooting her a charming smile.

“Happy to have you both,” she said brightly. “Have either of you visited Luray before?”

“He has,” Kurt said, inclining his head toward Blaine.

“He isn’t really much for nature, but I’m hoping to change that,” Blaine chimed in, and bumped his hip against Kurt’s.

“Honestly,” Jen began, leaning closer and lowering her voice conspiratorially, “I hate nature. But that’s the great thing about this experience, because it’s more about the history and what _you_ take away from it.

“Now, we’re pretty quiet around here today, and usually they don’t run the tours without at least eight people,” she continued, and from the corner of his eye, Kurt saw Blaine’s shoulders droop. “But since you guys are the only booking for the next hour or so, I don’t see why we can’t go do our thing.”

“Great!” Blaine exclaimed, before turning a thousand-watt smile on Kurt. “What do you think?”

Kurt looked at him, taking in the flush of amber hope in Blaine’s eyes and the slight twitch in the very tips of his fingers as he brought his hands together and clasped them in front of his chest with a pout. Already beginning to feel his resolve crumble, Kurt glanced around the brightly-lit and inviting visitor’s center, the snapshots of the caverns adorning the walls sparking in him a somewhat foreign sense of intrigue.

“Alright, let’s go.”

 

The caverns were magnificent; there were no other words to describe them. Kurt found himself unexpectedly enthralled in each and every room, and despite their repeated attempts to draw him into their chatter, he paid almost no attention to Jen and Blaine’s animated discussion about the history of the place. He was strangely spellbound by the quiet, natural grandeur of the place, and by the time the tour was nearly over, his neck was aching from how much time he had spent looking up.

“Told you this place was magical,” Blaine said, his voice carrying over the harmonies resonating from the Great Stalacpipe Organ. Kurt could feel the lower notes reverberating deep within his chest, and he shot Blaine a genuine and humbled smile.

“You were right,” he conceded, quickly adding, “but please don’t do the told-you-so dance. We’re still in a cave.”

“I swear, you guys make one of the cutest couples I’ve ever seen,” Jen intoned, and both Kurt and Blaine turned to her in alarm.

“Oh no, we’re not—I mean, um, we’re…” Blaine trailed off, stammering.

“Yeah, no, we’re—we’re just friends,” Kurt agreed, feeling almost inexplicably as if he was lying through his teeth.

“But—crap, I’m sorry,” Jen said, glancing down at her clipboard and back up again. “It’s just—you guys, with all your sniping at each other, and the—the _looks,_ you know, you’re like one of those fabulous married couples and… And I’m just going to stop talking now.”

The organ’s music faded for a few moments as one song ended and the next began, and during the pregnant silence, Kurt could feel Blaine’s eyes on him. He didn’t dare look back. Since Rehoboth Beach, they had each retreated to their separate trenches. Whatever lay between them had become as no-man’s land: to be traversed carefully—if at all—and with no small measure of trepidation. And most definitely not in a damned cave.

“Only as awkward as we let it be,” Jen finally said with a bright smile, and as she inclined her head toward the next archway to begin leading them on, Kurt breathed a sigh of relief.

When they were in the final room of the tour, Blaine turned to Jen with all lingering traces of awkwardness swept away and asked, “Do you guys still do the same thing with the lights in here?”

 _“How_ do you keep remembering this stuff?” Jen asked incredulously, and Blaine shrugged with a grin.

“What thing with the lights?” Kurt asked, looking to Jen for the answer.

“Okay, so we usually finish out the tour by turning off all the lights and letting people experience what true darkness is like, and what it would have been like for the first people to discover the caves,” Jen explained, and Kurt immediately tensed. “Really get a feel for it, you know? I mean, there’s nothing else like it. Usually there are two guides with a group, and one of us will go switch off the lights while the other stays down here, but since there’s only one of me, can I trust you guys not to go insane and start creating havoc?”

“Of course,” Blaine answered matter-of-factly, waving her off.

“Alright, then. I’ll be back in a couple minutes,” Jen said, and turned on her heel, striding away towards the exit and calling over her shoulder, “Stay put, guys!

Kurt let out a weak, nervous chuckle, trying to square his shoulders and hold his head high. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the dark. Not at all. On the contrary, he had always found a solitary kind of peace in being enshrouded by it. Getting up to use the bathroom only an hour after turning in and following the thin line of yellow around a doorframe, or waking up before sunrise in the middle of winter and wrapping his cold fingers around a mug of coffee in the morning silence of his kitchen were things that he found calming.

Spending three pitch-black minutes in the middle of a cave, on the other hand…

“Hey. You okay?” Blaine asked, stepping a little closer and carefully examining Kurt’s face.

“Fine. Forewarned is forearmed, right?” Kurt joked feebly, and Blaine’s brow furrowed.

“Are you sure? I can call her back and—“

Darkness fell as sharp and quick as the blade of a guillotine, and Kurt’s head snapped upwards almost involuntarily, a gasp getting caught in the back of his throat. He turned his head from side to side, suddenly feeling as if it wasn’t just the light that was gone, but his sight as well. Never before had he experienced this kind of complete, oppressively encompassing darkness, and after a few seconds it seemed to close about him.

“Kurt?” Blaine asked, tentatively. His voice was loud, as if he was mere inches away, but Kurt could have sworn they had been standing further apart than that. “Kurt? You okay?”

“Mmhmm,” Kurt managed, his own voice sounding louder than normal. It was as if the darkness was acting as an amplifier, a giant bowl where every single rustle of fabric and distant trickle of water wound him up tighter and tighter. He wrapped his arms around his torso, closing in on himself as even the sound of his breathing became louder and he heard Blaine shifting from one foot to the other.

It was cold down in the caves, far colder than the cloudy yet mild day outside, and even so, as soon as Kurt began to think about how far underground they were, his palms began to sweat and his breathing became shallow, as if the oxygen was hard to come by. He felt a pressure on his chest, his heart racing the more he panicked and gasped for air, and he pressed his palm to the base of his collarbone to try and counter the band squeezing him, but it was suffocating, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t—

“Hey, hey,” Blaine whispered, taking Kurt’s hand in the darkness, and Kurt’s heart began to race even faster, deafening and surely Blaine could hear it, hear the effect a mere touch had even when Kurt was panicking more than he could process. “Kurt, it’s okay, I’m right here. Just come towards me, okay?”

Kurt blithely followed Blaine’s words, shuffling closer with his breathing becoming harsher and harsher, clear air an almost forgotten sensation that he chased after even though it felt fruitless. There was a roaring whoosh tearing through his head, and he only dimly registered Blaine pulling him closer, flush against his body with his fingers carding into the back of Kurt’s hair and Kurt’s forehead pressed to his temple.

“Just focus on me, okay? Just focus on me,” Blaine whispered rapidly, swaying them both on the spot. “Breathe, sweetheart.”

Kurt closed his eyes and tried to focus on their movement back and forth, back and forth, but there was no discernible rhythm and every time he thought he’d found one to count along to it evaded him again and his breath kept on stuttering, stammering, getting stuck on the way to where it needed to be and just as he was beginning to feel lightheaded, Blaine [started to hum](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/49172722676). Quietly at first, almost too quiet to hear even in the utterly concentrated silence of the cave, but the melody formed and grew until Kurt recognized it, until Blaine found its rhythm and swayed them in time.

 _“Somewhere over the rainbow way up high,”_ he sang, voice low and clear and cutting through the dark, _“there’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.”_

Back and forth, slowly in and slowly out, _somewhere over the rainbow,_ back and forth, slowly in and slowly out, _skies are blue._ Degree by degree, Kurt got his breathing under control. He found himself almost wrapped around Blaine, in itself an entirely different kind of containment, one of safety and care that took him back to a boy of only six years old, the very first time they had watched _The Lion King_ together and Kurt had had no idea what was going to happen when the antelope began their stampede. Blaine had held his hand and then all of him, keeping him together just as he was doing now.

_“Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are—“_

Blaine stopped short as light flooded back in, and for the first time since he had taken his hand, Kurt felt the slightest of tremors in Blaine’s body. They swayed on the spot for a moment more, until Blaine cleared his throat and smoothed his fingers over the back of Kurt’s hair. Shakily, Kurt exhaled the last breath he had taken, feeling it flow warmly between them.

He opened his eyes, still unwilling to move so much as an inch, and wondered if a kiss on the cheek to say thank you would be a step too far into no-man’s land.

“Are you okay?” Blaine whispered, and Kurt nodded, finally shifting his weight back onto his own two feet. The hand Blaine had worked into his hair slid down the side of his neck and brushed off his shoulder, taking warmth with it. “Sure?”

When Kurt didn’t respond, Blaine ducked into his downcast eye line and looked at him searchingly. The space between them was dense with tension, Blaine unconsciously licking his full lips, and Kurt scrabbled around for something to say instead of watching the movie reel unfurling in his head; a swell of music or maybe none at all, lighting just the right amount of dim and atmospheric, and Kurt rocking forward on his toes to crush his mouth to Blaine’s, hands fisted in the front of his soft maroon cardigan.

“Do you think _Parks and Rec_ was right about cave sex?” he asked, simply blurting the first thing that came into his head, and immediately wanted to slap himself across the face.

“I don’t know, do you wanna find out?” Blaine countered, his tone one of innocence and earnest, yet still somehow loaded.

Kurt let out a tremulous chuckle and stepped completely out of Blaine’s hold, brushing himself off and feeling as if he really had become that six-year-old boy again, needing his best friend to hold him together because he couldn’t quite do it himself.

“Come on,” he said when he glanced up and saw Jen approaching from around the corner. “Let’s go find the gift shop. There’s probably an obnoxious t-shirt that I can buy for you.”

“Virginia is for lovers?” Blaine asked, and Kurt smiled thinly.

“Something like that.”

 

**Distance: 1,583 miles**

*

**Day 024: Wednesday 10th October, 2012  
Prescience (North Carolina)**

_“So… I think we should leave_ The Green Miles _for later, and for North Carolina… Hmm.”_

 _“What about_ Patch Adams?“

_“It’s like you read my mind.”_

 

Blaine was noticing more and more of what he'd decided to call ‘Kurtisms,’ things that he’d never noticed before—though maybe he had, but he hadn’t been looking at Kurt through this laser beam of attraction and want, where every movement caught his attention anew.

They were little things, really: the way he would gaze out of the passenger side window and hold the tip of his left thumb between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, pressing and rolling until the flesh turned white; how he would over-stretch and roll his shoulders when reaching for a glass on the cupboard's top shelf and sigh because it obviously felt good; the fact that every conversation was a surprise, and never truly finished.

“Have you ever read the story of Patch Adams, though?” Kurt asked, half-turning toward Blaine as they strolled through the Downtown Market in Asheville. The question came out of the blue, but was asked as if their discussion of their chosen movie for North Carolina hadn’t ended over three hours earlier.

“No,” Blaine admitted. “Don’t tell me it’s even sadder than the movie.”

“No, that’s the thing. It’s not really sad at all.”

“Well… That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Of course. I don’t know, I guess I just can’t help but feel a little cheated.”

“They did the same thing with Erin Brockovich, though. It all comes down to what’s good storytelling and what isn’t.”

“Speaking of which, we should probably try and figure out what the point of our documentary is,” Kurt said, adding with a sly grin, “You know, other than two cute film grads touring the US.”

“I was hoping that we’d kind of stumble upon an idea,” Blaine replied. “And by ‘we’ I mean ‘you,’ since you’re the one who’s been doing the most filming. Setting up the shots, checking the lighting…”

“It takes time to get the perfect shot. And besides, it’s all good practice.”

“What are you doing with all that footage, anyway?”

“Just transferring it to the computer,” Kurt answered a hair too quickly. “Why do you ask?”

Blaine asked because he knew exactly where a lot of his own footage was ending up. Shots of asphalt being consumed by the R.V., sunsets from the passenger side window and snatches of conversation with Kurt were all going straight to his blog—in lieu of proper entries, since he’d had neither the time nor the privacy. That very morning, for instance, was the first time he had risen before Kurt since the start of the trip. He’d only managed a paltry three paragraphs by the time Kurt had surfaced, bright-eyed and dancing around the kitchen as he made breakfast, The Black Ghosts’ [_Full Moon_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/49172780571) playing from his docked iPod and his hips swaying sensuously around the beat. The blend of his movements was so without discernible end that it was as if the song was his dance partner, leading and turning and dipping him across the kitchen with such fluid grace that, had he not known otherwise, Blaine could have sworn that Kurt was a dancer.

Their trip the previous day to explore the Biltmore Estate, coupled with the lingering, renewed memories from visiting Luray, had sparked in Blaine his old sense of adventure. Only this time, it wasn’t a place he wanted to explore. It was how, with the merest subtle shifts of muscle in the darkness, Kurt could have Blaine shivering and wanting to run cartographer’s fingers over his shoulder blades, the planes of his torso, and down, down, down.

“No reason,” he finally said, swallowing hard and eyes landing on a stall further up the way where a small African woman sat, surrounded by wooden tiles and wall hangings. The words he had written that morning played upon his mind as they drew closer to her, and his mind circled back around to the wondering—always the wondering. Wondering if it would be weird if things between he and Kurt weren’t at all awkward and instead they had just fallen into one another like it was something they had always been meant for, like their love had been bought and paid for years ago and they were only just growing into it.

As they arrived at the stall, the bright yellow of the woman’s clothing a stark contrast to the muted earth hues and wood tones surrounding her, she looked up at them with wide, deep-set eyes. Her face was weathered, dark freckles littering her cheeks and crowds of lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that belied decades. Her gaze briefly swept across Kurt and landed upon Blaine, boring into him with such intensity that he felt as if she could see straight into his heart to pick out the four letters he was sure were forming there.

“What are your names?” she demanded, her English heavily accented.

“I’m Blaine, and this is Kurt,” he answered.

“I am Nanyanika. They call me Nan,” she said, gesturing around herself and offering her hand to Kurt. After he had shaken it, she offered it to Blaine, holding on when he tried to let go. “You belong, yes?”

“Belong?” Blaine repeated.

“You are his,” Nan said, glancing between them. “He is yours.”

Blaine shook his head. “No, we’re not together. Just friends.”

“Hmm. ‘Just friends,’ I hear this a lot,” Nan said, dropping Blaine’s hand and reseating herself on her stool. From beneath her simple wooden workstation, covered in a deep green cloth that was patterned with the same symbols surrounding her, she pulled two small paintbrushes and pots of what looked like black ink and gestured for them to sit down.

“It’s true,” Kurt said, crossing one long leg over the other and loosening his thin scarf a little. “We’ve been best friends since we were six years old.”

Nan shook her head, her shoulders slumping as she said, “They come to me to see their life and never believe. They keep their eyes closed on purpose, don’t let themselves see. They think good means scary. So you have come to me to see your life, yes?”

“Um,” Blaine said articulately, and looked at Kurt.

“Yes,” Kurt answered her, the expression on his face one of curiosity. Blaine had to admit that, though he had never been much for spirituality—and Kurt, he knew, even less so—he was similarly intrigued.

“Sleeve up, arm out,” Nan commanded, and Kurt quickly complied, stretching his arm palm up across her workstation. She dipped one of the paintbrushes into the ink pot, loosely holding Kurt’s wrist with her free hand and, without ever taking her eyes off Kurt’s face, began to paint. “I paint three things: past, present, and future. We see what comes out after.”

Blaine watched in silent amazement; Nan couldn’t see what she was doing, but three symbols quickly took shape in a shock of black against the pale skin of Kurt’s underarm. He swallowed; they had often talked about getting tattoos, musing over placement and what they would be, but they had never actually gone ahead and done it. Seeing the markings on Kurt’s skin brought Blaine a shiver.

“I come from the Ashanti in Ghana, and these symbols are the Adinkra. Very important to my people, and tell us a lot,” Nan said, finishing the third symbol with a deft flick of her wrist and looking down at her work. She pointed to the first symbol, closest to Kurt’s hand—it looked like a ladder. _“Owuo atwedee._ You have death in your past, yes?”

Kurt raised his chin, nodding almost imperceptibly, and Nan gave his wrist a light shake.

“This is why we paint past so close to your hand, so you can let go,” she said, and quickly moved on to the second symbol: two swirls forming a heart. “This is good sign. _Sankofa;_ means you are learning from your past.” Of the third, a diagonally-crossed diamond, she said, _“Eban,_ for your future. For you, this is sign of love and security.”

Blaine watched Kurt trace the tip of his index finger around the _eban_ symbol, and blinked in surprise when Kurt agreed with Nan’s earlier sentiment, murmuring, “They are important. I wish they were permanent.”

Nan shook her head and pointed to the past and present symbols. “Very soon, you let go of this. Present become your past,” she said, sliding her fingers towards Kurt’s palm. “Your future become your present, and you get new future. You move forward, don’t get stuck.”

Kurt nodded and, seemingly satisfied, Nan released his arm and held out her hand for Blaine’s. He hesitated only for a moment before settling his wrist onto Nan’s palm. She didn’t start painting straight away as she had with Kurt; with her eyes she seemed to be sifting through the innermost workings of his mind until she found the thing she was looking for, whatever it was, and it took all of his willpower not to break the eye contact.

“You are running,” Nan said simply, and Blaine finally felt the wet press of ink against his skin. “But not away, and this is most curious thing about you. I think you were running away, but not now. Now you are running _to.”_

Blaine’s gaze slid into the corner of his periphery but he didn’t dare look up at Kurt—not now, not when every look had become loaded, like a powder keg packed to the brim and just waiting for the slightest of sparks to ignite it. They were carrying it between them as if it were a tangible thing, slowly circling a flame, and all the while Blaine was losing purchase.

“This is not usual, not usual,” Nan said as she sat back, and Blaine realized that the soft bristles of her paintbrush had ceased their movements against his skin. He took in his three symbols; his past could almost have been a basic Celtic knot, his present was something like the letter X, and his future—the same as Kurt’s. “I see _mpatapo_ for past, which is peacemaking. You stopped fighting. This explain running. For present, you have _fawohodie;_ this means you are free. Yes?”

Blaine nodded dumbly, struck by the accuracy of Nan’s insights.

“And your future, this is not usual at all. These lead you same place as ‘just friend,’” she said, her downturned mouth twisting into something that could have been a wry smile. “But for you, _eban_ is sign of home and love as one.”

“Maybe there’s some cutie back in Brunswick waiting for you,” Kurt murmured, nudging Blaine’s shoulder with his own.

Nan shook her head, gesturing emphatically to Blaine’s future symbol. “Home and love, see? They are same thing,” she declared, and then sighed heavily, standing to reach one of the displays of small wooden tiles that hung around her stall. Both Kurt and Blaine followed suit, watching as Nan retrieved two tiles bearing the _eban_ symbol, and held them between her palms. “But you will _not_ see, not yet. You keep your eyes closed and complicate things. So you take these, and work for them.”

Blaine reached into his pocket for his wallet as Kurt took their tiles, but Nan waved her hand dismissively. “Come back and see Nan when your future is present,” she said, and for a moment that wry smile was back and Blaine couldn’t quite figure out if she just wanted to see them again, or if she wanted to be proved correct in her thinly-veiled predictions.

“Thank you,” he said almost distractedly, too many thoughts turning over in his mind to form one coherent string.

“It was lovely to meet you,” Kurt added. Nan inclined her head.

“You both run, see what happens,” were her final words before she sat down again, putting away her brushes and ink.

When they were far enough away so as to be out of earshot, Kurt whirled on Blaine with a bewildered glance. “That was insanely weird, right? It wasn’t just me?”

“I don’t know. She seemed to have us figured out,” Blaine said with a shrug he didn’t quite believe.

“The past and present stuff, maybe,” Kurt conceded. “But the future stuff… I mean, _you_ know I’m not really into—relationships, and… And what was all that about you ‘running to’ something?”

“No idea,” Blaine said, and took a deep breath, trying to shake Nan’s words and the weight of her gaze. He could almost still feel it lingering upon him, along with the words ringing in his ears— _now you are running_ to.

The sun was finally breaking through the thick bank of cloud that hung heavily above them, and Blaine raised his hand to shield his eyes. “I’m starving. Wanna check out that café further up?”

“Actually, do you mind if we head back to the R.V.?” Kurt asked. “I found a pasta recipe I’ve been dying to try. Plus, I need to catch up on a few emails, and since the park has Wi-Fi…”

Blaine grinned, rolling his eyes fondly and gesturing for Kurt to lead the way.

 

**Distance: 1,970 miles**

*

**Day 025: Thursday 11th October, 2012  
Softly, Softly (South Carolina)**

_“How about_ The Notebook?”

_“A beautiful love story like that? You’re softening, Kurt.“_

_“What’s beautiful about it is the cinematography. Something I can aspire to.”_

 

“I won’t be long,” Kurt said, already unclipping his seat belt as he cut the engine. “Just wait here?”

“Where are we?” Blaine asked. He glanced through the windshield at the other cars in the parking lot.

“Just something I need to see,” Kurt muttered, grabbing his phone from the dashboard and repeating, “I won’t be long.”

“Kurt, stop,” Blaine said, reaching across and taking Kurt’s arm. “Why are we here?”

Kurt paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. He slipped his arm out of Blaine’s grasp and, just before he opened the door and hopped out of the cab, simply said, “This is Mom’s alma mater.”

He walked quickly up Greene Street, following the directions he pulled up on his phone and hoping that his dad hadn’t chosen today to check their progress on the GPS. It was a beautiful sunny day, but Kurt struggled to feel the warmth beating down upon him as he made his way closer to the campus proper. The two events that had led to Kurt cutting through downtown Columbia instead of heading straight to Sesquicentennial State Park were, by rights, inconsequential. Nothing on their own: a pair of fleeting reminders of the past he tried not to think too much about—a brief sting to the heart and mind, but ultimately like raindrops slowly rolling from roof tiles. In quick succession, however, was another matter entirely.

It had all begun with the song that cut a swath through the radio static as they passed state lines, Blaine reaching over to turn it up and shimmy in his seat.

 _“And I know that this must be heaven, how could so much love be inside of you?”_ Stevie Wonder had sung, his voice as full of mirth and joy as Kurt remembered: sitting at the kitchen table when he was still young enough that his feet didn’t quite reach the linoleum and watching his parents dance; later, joining his dad in his mother’s place as she sat, hands on her heaving belly and giggling as Kurt tried to teach his father proper turn-out.

He had reached over to change the station but withdrew at the last moment, letting it in and feeling the wistful pain instead of pushing it away. His grip on the steering wheel had remained tight until his fingers were aching from it.

The first time they’d passed a sign for the University of South Carolina bearing the legend ‘Go Gamecocks!’ Blaine had said, “Oh my god. It’s too easy, right?”

“Way too easy,” Kurt had replied offhandedly, before doing a double-take and craning his neck around as they’d sped past, another memory of his mom—shuffling around the house with a cold, the long sleeves of her USC sweatshirt hanging over her hands—rising in the forefront of his mind and leaving him with the feeling of having the breath punched from his chest. He remembered crawling up onto the couch beside her as she blew her nose and tracing the letters on her sweatshirt with the tip of his index finger, a rerun of an old _American Bandstand_ episode playing in the background. He’d asked for a story, and she’d told him about the fountain where she had first met Kurt’s dad.

Dappled sunlight playing across the sidewalk, he glanced up at the blue sky through the trees and squared his shoulders as he drew closer to where he could already hear the fountain over passing cars and small groups of chattering students apparently heading home for the day. As he passed from beneath the cover of the trees and sunshine broke over him once more, he wrapped his arms around himself and crossed the terrace with long strides.

Standing at the edge of the fountain, Kurt expected to feel more of a sense of closure, peace, anything.

He felt nothing. What he had was only memories of stories told to him, not memories of his own. This place meant nothing to him anymore, even though one day many years ago it had felt like a magical promised land.

Exhaling deeply, he sat down on the very edge of the low wall that bordered the fountain and ran the tips of his fingers back and forth through the cool water, trying and failing to keep his mind blank. His thoughts were weighted heavily with something that had been creeping in the recesses of his mind since driving past the cemetery the day he and Blaine had left Brunswick, keeping to the shadows and biding its time mostly out of sight, but always a presence that Kurt could feel.

“Excuse me,” came a gruff voice from somewhere above him, and as Kurt looked up to find its source, he shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare and found himself face to face with a man who looked like a professor approaching retirement age. His hair and mustache were light gray fading into white, and he was clad in a tweed jacket one would expect to see on any stereotypical movie professor. With a genial smile that reminded Kurt of Blaine’s grandfather, the gentleman gestured to the wall next to Kurt. “Would you mind if I sit?”

“Of course not, please,” he answered.

“These old legs are certainly not what they used to be,” the man said as he sat down, his voice holding a mild South Carolina accent. For a moment, he regarded Kurt with appraising eyes. “You’re not a student here, are you?”

“What gave me away?” Kurt asked, suddenly wondering if he was breaking a rule.

“Ah, I’m just good with faces,” the man said, waving him off. “You do look remarkably like one of my ex-students, though.” After a somewhat awkward pause, the man held out his hand. “John Goldman, professor of psychology.”

“Kurt Hummel, nice to meet you.”

“Hummel?” John repeated, and Kurt nodded. “Tell me, you wouldn’t happen to be related to Elizabeth Sheridan, would you?”

Kurt froze, breath catching in his chest. “That was my mother’s maiden name.”

“I knew it. I knew it!” John exclaimed, his lined face lighting up. “I never forget a face, and you look just like her.”

“Did you—was she a student of yours?”

“Indeed she was. One of my favorites, though I’d deny it if anyone ever asked me. How is she these days, is she well?”

“I—“

It was the same every time—the throb and stutter in his heart, the thickness in his throat—and Kurt swallowed convulsively, hungry with a sudden need to learn more about his mom from someone whose memories of her weren’t colored by the tragedy of her death.

“She died when I was eight,” Kurt said, steeling himself to give the same explanation his father had recited by rote to every last person that had called their house in the weeks afterward. “She and my dad were on their way back from a Lamaze class one night, and they hit a patch of ice and spun out of control. My dad was fine, just a couple of bruises, but there just… Wasn’t anything they could do for her.”

“Oh, my. I’m so very sorry to hear that,” John said gravely. “And she was pregnant?”

“With my baby sister. There was a, um… They couldn’t save them both so they tried to save my mom, but… Her heart stopped, and they tried to do compressions but she had a—a punctured lung—“

“Kurt,” John intoned, his hand a heavy and unexpected comfort on Kurt’s shoulder.

He reached up to wipe at his eyes and found them dry. The night it had happened, Kurt had been sleeping over at Blaine’s house and they had both awoken to the sound of the static at the end of Blaine’s videotape of _The Lion King._ As Kurt had been scrambling around for the remote to switch off the television, they’d heard voices, and Blaine had convinced him to sneak downstairs and eavesdrop.

Kurt hadn’t cried since that night, after the light from the open doorway had spilled out around his dad’s crumpling silhouette and the world as he’d known it had ended with only a handful of shattering words. He’d run out to Blaine’s backyard in his bare feet and flannel pajamas, screamed himself hoarse at the sky because wasn’t his mommy going to be up there, just like Mufasa? Wasn’t she going to be up there?

“Why isn’t she up there, Blaine?” Kurt had demanded when Blaine had circled around to stand in front of him, and even though Blaine had told Kurt he didn’t know and Kurt had hated him for it, Blaine had still caught him as he’d fallen forward, and had held onto him until his dad had come to carry him back into the house.

“I’m so very sorry, Kurt,” John repeated, ducking his head to catch Kurt’s gaze.

Abruptly, Kurt asked, “What was she like when you knew her?”

John sat back, the corners of his mustache twitching upwards with a smile. “Quiet, bookish. And smart, so very smart. She and your father were inseparable. He didn’t even attend college, but whenever I saw her around campus, there they were together. She was always smiling when he was around.”

Kurt scratched at the backs of his fingers. “Dad remarried when I was sixteen. She—Carole, she was one of the midwives that night; that’s how they met, but I guess they lost touch and didn’t see each other again for years.”

“And how did you feel about that?” John asked gently.

“I was happy for him. Carole’s lovely, and we get along well. She has a son a few months older than me, so that was—different, but… It’s been okay. Better than before, I guess.”

“But she’ll never be your mother, right?”

“Until I saw the road signs, I’d forgotten she even went to school here,” Kurt admitted. “How did I forget that?”

John cocked his head to the side. “It’s an easy detail to forget, given how young you were when she passed. You remember other things instead, I’m sure.”

“I try not to.” He blurted it out before he could even think about it, and at the terrible truth of his own words he felt utterly ashamed.

“Because every single time, it makes your breath come a little less easily,” John said quietly.

“Hmm?”

“When the sadness comes back. Because it does, it always does, sooner or later. And each time it gets a little harder to stomach.”

“Actually—yes, that’s exactly what it’s like. How…”

“Psychology professor, remember?”

Kurt let out a huff of grim laughter and returned his gaze back to the breeze-rippled surface of the water in the fountain, the wobbling outlines of pennies that had been tossed in there with wishes to ace a final or win the lottery.

“Kurt, if I might ask… How old are you now?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Forgive me if I’m crossing a line, here, but… Don’t you think that’s an awfully long time to be carrying this pain around with you?”

“I don’t know what else to do with it,” Kurt whispered, wondering exactly why it was so easy to unburden himself to a perfect stranger and so ceaselessly difficult with someone he’d known almost since before he could remember.

“Well, a habit isn’t a habit if it’s not hard to break,” John said succinctly. “But you can break it, if you want to. You can have it in your back pocket without it dictating your life.”

“I don’t… It’s turned me into someone I don’t want to be,” Kurt confessed, memories of how he’d spent his formative years—passing the time by breaking hearts—rushing to the surface. “But I don’t know how to be any other way.”

“Do you have a penny?”

Kurt met John’s eyes with a quirked eyebrow, and at his impassive expression, decided to humor him. He reached into his pocket and drew out a quarter.

“Good, now stand up and face the water,” John instructed him brightly, contradicting his earlier words by almost jumping to his feet, and Kurt wondered if the man had already known or been able to see something in him as he’d happened by. When Kurt was standing, John gestured out to the water. “Make a wish.”

“Do I get twenty-five wishes?” Kurt asked jokingly, turning the quarter over and over.

“No. But you do get a chance to do something that I think you probably don’t do all that often.”

“Which is?”

“Put a little faith in something.”

Kurt paused at that, struck by the man’s insight. “Am I really that transparent?”

“More of a mirror, actually,” John replied mildly, but there was a sadness in his tone that lent weight to his words. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“What do I wish for?” Kurt asked after a moment, and John shrugged.

“Whatever you want most for yourself.”

Kurt looked out at the water, taking in the sprays from the three jets set along the center. He followed the white wall bordering the pool and then let his gaze slide up and away to the benches nestled in the shade of the crepe myrtle trees, their branches hanging heavily under the weight of their pink blossoms. He could almost picture his mother here, the incarnation of her that he’d never known—a dress and shorts, leggings and slouch socks and Keds—handing off a stack of thick psychology textbooks to his father and smiling, smiling, smiling.

 _I wish to be what he needs me to be,_ Kurt thought, suddenly flashing on Blaine that night in Philadelphia, splayed out underneath him and waiting for a kiss that Kurt had been unable to give. Blaine needed all of the person he chose to love, and Kurt didn’t know how to let someone have all of him when _no one_ had ever had all of him. With the hope that he could learn, he flipped the coin into the water, where it disappeared with a soft _plink._

“Now make it come true,” John said. He glanced down at his watch and turned to face Kurt squarely. “I’m afraid I have a meeting in ten minutes, so I should be on my way.”

Kurt nodded, once more wrapping his arms around himself but feeling that he didn’t need to hold himself together quite so tightly. It was an alien sensation, and he didn’t quite know how to process it.

“What made you stop and talk to me?” he asked.

John glanced at the fountain, squinting against the sunlight, and said almost cryptically, “Elizabeth wasn’t the only person who shared this place with someone she once loved.”

“Well… Thank you. For listening,” Kurt said sincerely, hoping his sparse words would convey so much more.

“Of course. Take care of yourself, Kurt,” John said, before adding, “She’d want you to.”

As John walked away, Kurt took a last long look at the fountain and turned back the way he had come. His thoughts fell into quiet reminiscence, and he recalled trips in the car that had felt endless, sitting in the back seat and convincing himself that the car wasn’t moving, that it was the buildings and trees that were chasing one another past the windows while Stevie Wonder played quietly in the front, his parents holding hands over the center console. As the trees and buildings moved slowly past him, he let himself wonder if they had been holding hands that night, if they had broken their grasp or held on more tightly when they’d begun to skid.

Crossing the street just past a small, brick-built Catholic chapel, Kurt saw Blaine standing under the shade of a tree at the entrance to the parking lot, his hand raised in a small wave.

Kurt smiled, and waved back.

When he reached the R.V. and pulled himself up through the open side door, [soft music](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/49731025617) was playing and Blaine was dropping tea bags into two white mugs, the kettle switched on and the water bubbling. Kurt leaned against the door frame for a moment, watching and listening to the song’s lyrics— _“today has been okay, today has been okay.”_

“How was it?” Blaine asked, glancing over his shoulder.

“Strange, and… Okay,” Kurt said, pushing himself upright and walking closer, fingertips trailing along the countertop.

“Sure?”

The kettle boiled, and as Blaine reached for it Kurt impulsively took his outstretched arm and pulled him into a tight hug, pressing his forehead to Blaine’s temple. A moment or two passed before Blaine was reaching up to wind his fingers into the hair at the back of Kurt’s head, and as he did so, Kurt pressed a fleeting kiss to his cheek.

It wasn’t much, or even close to enough, not yet. But it was a start.

 

**Distance: 2,137 miles**

*

**Day 028: Sunday 14th October, 2012  
Chrysalis (Georgia)**

_“How are we supposed to choose? Rock paper scissors tournament?”_

_“Blaine, I think you’re missing the fact that there’s an Oscar-winning Sandra Bullock movie on this list.“_

_“Huh. I guess you could say I was_ blindsided. _…Stop rolling your eyes at me, come on.”_

 

Every once in a while, there were times where Blaine acutely felt the blessing of having Kurt Hummel in his life. This, their second day in what he’d thought was going to be Savannah but had actually turned out to be Atlanta, was one of those times.

When they had left Columbia the previous day, Kurt turning out of the Sesquicentennial State Park with a bright smile the likes of which Blaine could barely ever remember him sporting, Blaine had retrieved the trip folder from the glove compartment to put their destination’s zip code into the GPS. Kurt’s arm had shot out and clamped the folder shut, dragging it across to his own lap. He hadn’t been quick enough, however—Blaine had already seen the booking confirmation for Stone Mountain Park, Atlanta, GA.

“Atlanta?” he’d asked. “I thought we were headed for Savannah; it’s right on the way to Florida.”

“Ugh,” Kurt had groaned, throwing up one of his hands and shoving the folder back at Blaine. “It was supposed to be a surprise since the dates worked out so well, but you might as well know.”

Curiously, Blaine had reopened the folder, flipping straight to the GA divider, and his eyes went wide. “Kurt, are you serious?”

“You’ve never managed to make it to one before, so…”

“Oh my god, _marry me,”_ Blaine had breathed, so excited as he’d taken in the folder’s colorful contents that he’d forgotten his words a second later.

And now here he was, still a little head-sore from Kiki by the Park the previous night, but loving every single second of this, his first-ever Pride event. They had been standing on Piedmont Avenue, across the street from The Flying Biscuit Café where they’d eaten a grotesquely large breakfast, for over three hours already. The thousands-strong crowd was cheering as Owl City’s [_Good Time_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/49976421227) blared over a P.A. system, the first of the floats slowly approaching from the other end of the street, crossing a road that was probably named Peachtree. He and Kurt were shoved up against each other, Blaine behind him and slightly to the right with one hand either side of him on the railings. It was almost a perfect mirror of that magical night in Rhode Island, the memory marred only by Blaine’s near misstep, and Blaine was beginning to think that perhaps now, perhaps soon, it wouldn’t be such a misstep after all.

 _“This_ is what you’ve been missing out on all these years,” Kurt told him, turning his head and his warm breath fanning across the shell of Blaine’s ear. “Do you love it?”

“I love it,” Blaine replied, and he couldn’t help it: he wound his arm around Kurt’s waist and rested his forehead on Kurt’s shoulder. Kurt only tensed for a moment before relaxing entirely into the hold, leaning back against Blaine and threading their fingers together across his stomach. Blaine grinned into his shoulder, loving this newly affectionate side of his best friend—it was only a few days since Kurt had visited his mom’s old college, but ever since that first hug in the kitchen, Kurt had seemed to be making an effort to just touch more. A glancing nudge to Blaine’s thigh as Kurt got up to go to bed after their movie; a brief squeeze to his arm as they waited in line for breakfast at Café Strudel; a fleeting brush across his lower back as Kurt edged around him in the narrow walkway to take his turn in the bathroom.

Aside from it driving Blaine slowly and quietly crazy with desire, that softly tingling buzz in his bloodstream, it simply made him feel… Special. Worthy.

The crowd went wild as Atlanta’s police and fire departments proceeded gradually by, red and blue lights flashing, and as Blaine followed them with his eyes, he caught the gaze of the tall blond standing next to him, rainbow stripes painted down his neck and arm. The guy gestured to Kurt—who was looking the other way, craning his neck to see the floats coming down the street—and gave Blaine a thumbs-up and a wink, and Blaine couldn’t help but grin even harder.

“Today is perfect,” he said into Kurt’s ear, resisting the urge to nuzzle into his neck.

“I knew you’d love it,” Kurt replied, and save for the occasional whoop or cheer as each float went past, they were enveloped in the comfortable quiet that they’d always been able to fall into together.

The parade was an hour-long riot of color, sound, light, and laughter that held Blaine’s rapt attention as he took in floats for Bubbles Salon, Chi Chi LaRue, and the Swinging Richards. He watched in awe at the sheer number of families marching under the banner of PFLAG, proclaiming their love for their gay, lesbian, and transgendered children and relatives, along with the huge and bright turn-out from Atlanta’s Gay-Straight Alliance. The longer the parade went on, the more Blaine felt drunk on the very air surrounding them, filled with love and acceptance for everything that they all were. It was one of the headiest feelings he’d experienced in a long time.

As the parade began to draw to a close, the music faded into The xx’s [_Intro_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/50310776666) and a strange hush seemed to fall over the crowds further up the street. Still holding on to Kurt, he turned them both sideways to get a better look.

“It’s Angel Action, like they did for Matthew Shepard in Laramie,” Kurt said, and that was when Blaine realized what he was looking at: a procession of angels, everyone dressed in flowing white robes and holding boards with the names and faces of teenagers who had committed suicide after being victimized and horrifically bullied for their sexuality.

All at once, the sadness and melancholy settling over him like a well-worn jacket, Blaine’s giddiness faded. Finding it hard to look at the faces as they passed by, he once again dropped his forehead to rest on Kurt’s shoulder, his grasp around Kurt’s waist tightening and pulling him closer.

After a moment, Kurt turned to face him. “I know what you’re thinking about,” he murmured, his hand a gentle pressure lifting Blaine’s chin to meet his eyes. “Don’t.”

“I should have been there. If we hadn’t had that stupid fight—“

“Blaine, it was a couple of bruises. Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Kurt said reassuringly, but when Blaine closed his eyes, he could still see the purple rage blossomed across the freckled skin of Kurt’s cheek and jaw, the steel in Kurt’s eyes as he looked at the contents of his McQueen messenger bag strewn across the dirty floor of their high school changing rooms. “Besides, you came back for me.”

“It still shouldn’t have happened,” Blaine muttered, shaking his head and casting his gaze down at the frayed edges of his favorite pair of Sperrys.

“Need I remind you that it got him expelled? At the very least maybe he would’ve thought twice before doing it to somebody else,” Kurt said. “Will you please look at me?”

Blaine did, and after a pregnant pause, Kurt grinned and shook him by the shoulders until Blaine was smiling too.

“I was _lucky_ to have you, Blaine Anderson,” he said. “Look at all these poor kids that didn’t have someone like you; a best friend who wanted to fight their battles for them.”

“You’re right,” Blaine agreed, something tightening in the pit of his stomach even as he did so. There was that word again: friend. “I was lucky to have you, too.”

“I know you were,” Kurt quipped, and turned back around to watch the end of the parade.

Blaine breathed slowly, trying to rid himself of the sense of deflation taking him over. They really had been amongst the lucky ones, and it was only at the beginning of the parade that Blaine had been feeling extra thankful to be able to call Kurt his best friend. Was he really willing to put all of it at risk? The thing was, what Kurt had said into the rain of Rehoboth Beach had been right. That night in Philadelphia, Blaine hadn’t been anywhere near as drunk as Kurt, and he remembered every second of what had happened between them. The memory was burned more brightly into his mind than any other memory he had of Kurt—how could he simply be expected to forget it?

Blaine wanted more; he’d had one taste and it wasn’t nearly enough. But for now, watching the passing faces of the teenagers who had felt like they’d had no one at all, the ball remained firmly in Kurt’s court. It was why, when Blaine got into bed that night and Kurt slid the warm pillow he’d been leaning against over to Blaine’s side of the bed, Blaine wouldn’t crowd Kurt’s body with his own and pepper kisses over the skin of his bare shoulder.

It was why, when Blaine felt Kurt pulling away from him to wave at the final group in the parade—the scantily-clad men in black booty shorts and thigh-high boots, bearing angel wings and signs offering free hugs—he simply loosened his grip and let Kurt slip from his arms.

“Hey, over here!” Kurt called out, and one of the angels sauntered over. His light brown hair was styled up and away from his face, focusing all of the attention on his piercing green eyes and the sweep of rainbow colors accenting his prominent cheekbones. Inclining his head towards Blaine, Kurt told the angel, “My friend here could use a hug.”

“Is that right? Aren’t you enjoying the parade, sweetheart?” the angel asked, raking his gaze down Blaine’s body, and Blaine held his hands up, heat filling his cheeks.

“I’m—No, I’m having a fantastic time, I don’t need a free hug—“ 

“How about a free kiss instead?”

Before Blaine knew what was happening, there were broad, sun-warmed hands cupping the sides of his neck and soft lips alighting upon his own. And for a handful of moments, he let himself get lost in the feel of the angel’s mouth, lips gently working his own open with increasing pressure until Blaine was kissing him back and almost moaning into the sensation, _finally, finally,_ and he could taste cinnamon gum—but Kurt hated cinnamon gum, this wasn’t right, what was—

Blaine heard Kurt clearing his throat, and in a blink, the kiss was over. As he pulled away, the angel pressed a condom into Blaine’s slack hand—and if that wasn’t just the tackiest thing ever, he didn’t know what was—and with a suave grin, murmured, “Find me later, killer.”

“Oh my god,” Blaine breathed as the angel turned away to rejoin the parade.

“Come on, Blaine, he can’t have been _that_ good,” Kurt scoffed, and Blaine almost stepped back as he saw that same steel in his eyes. Kurt crossed his arms over his chest as he watched the crowd of angels continue down the street, the almost sheer fabric of his white tee stretching over his upper arms, and Blaine swallowed.

“No, I mean—“ Blaine cut off, and dropped his voice. “He told me to find him later. I need a disguise!”

“So you don’t—“ Kurt stopped, dropping his gaze. Blaine watched as a small smile quirked the corners of his mouth for a passing moment, before Kurt cleared his expression and looked back up. “I think you’d make a very fetching Batman. They probably have face-painting inside the park, actually.”

With the end of the parade, the crowd was filtering into the street to march behind them towards Piedmont Park for the rest of the day’s Pride events. On a whim, Blaine grabbed Kurt’s hand and linked their fingers together, and it felt like the Brooklyn Bridge all over again. “You know, if you want to go full Bowie, I won’t stand in your way. I know you have an addiction, but it’s really kind of adorable.”

Kurt silently swung their joined hands between them and circled Blaine’s palm with his thumb, another one of those new little things of his where Blaine felt like he’d been thrown a curve ball and didn’t quite know how to act, other than to smile at him for just a little too long and with a little too much hope. While he might push, nudge, edge them a little closer to perhaps soon, he wouldn’t be the first to break their stalemate. He couldn’t, no matter how much he might want to make an unholy mess of everything they had built together, just so that he could know, one way or another.

All he could do was be ready for the next curve ball. He just didn’t know what it would be.

 

**Distance: 2,356 miles**

*

[Kurt's Blog](http://100daysofkurt.tumblr.com) | [Blaine's Blog](http://100daysofblaine.tumblr.com) | [The Music](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

**Day 031/032: Wednesday 17th/Thursday 18th October, 2012  
Kiss/Consume (Florida)**

_“Kurt, no. I hate_ My Girl.”

_“What? No, you don’t. You cry every single time she runs in and starts telling them to put on his glasses. Besides, you’ve had three vetoes already.”_

_“…Three vetoes is a stupid rule.”_

 

“Ugh. Is there no such thing as ‘behind closed doors’ anymore?”

“What?”

“Come look at this.”

From his vantage point in the R.V.’s open doorway, hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea, Kurt watched the couple making their way back from the beach. The girl’s shoes hung from her fingertips as her long turquoise skirt billowed around her, the lower third of it either tie-dyed or soaked with seawater, Kurt couldn’t tell. The guy with her—clearly her boyfriend, or perhaps a lover in a torrid affair, which Kurt would have found infinitely more interesting—kept stopping every few paces to bury his hands in her shoulder-length blonde locks and kiss her as if nobody were watching.

There probably _wasn’t_ anybody else watching, aside from Kurt. And Blaine, of course, when Kurt felt the gentle press of Blaine’s chest against his shoulder blades; not close enough, but not far enough, either.

“You don’t think they’re kind of cute?” Blaine asked.

“I think I’m surprised that they’re not bursting into flames, being out in broad daylight and all,” Kurt said with a sniff, and took a sip of his tea.

“So you’re telling me that if someone kissed you like that, you’d really give a shit where it happened,” Blaine challenged him, moving to lean against the door frame and look at Kurt pointedly, arms crossed over his chest.

“I can safely say that if someone kissed me like they were trying to eat my face, I’d be thoroughly repulsed and make for the nearest exit,” Kurt replied blithely, trying to make his tone as nonchalant as possible. The all-day sunshine and humidity had done little good for Blaine’s wild curls since their arrival in St. Augustine the previous day, but they had done wonders for his temperament, and currently he was in the mood for teasing. Kurt could almost hear the rest of the conversation unfolding before they’d even had it.

“I think you’re jealous,” Blaine said, poking Kurt in the arm. “The heat’s getting to you.”

“It’s not the heat at all. It’s that we had to stop at yet _another_ Walmart, this time one with homeless people living inside, and it’s also that I’m a great kisser, and watching _that_ makes me want to throw up,” Kurt retorted, the words tumbling from between his lips before he could even consider them and oh, _how_ did Blaine always manage to get under his skin like that?

“A _great_ kisser, huh?” Blaine drawled, and Kurt could have kicked himself. The trap was set.

“Yup. I’ve had feedback,” he quipped, taking another sip of his tea and glancing back out of the doorway.

“Show me.”

“What?!” Kurt spluttered. He wiped a few stray drops of tea from his chin as he regarded Blaine with an incredulous look. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I’m very serious,” Blaine countered, standing up straight and dropping his arms to his sides. “Lay one on me.”

“If I remember correctly, you’ve already had one ‘laid on you’ in the past few days,” Kurt said hotly, turning on his heel and taking his tea to the sink. He lifted the cover and unceremoniously dumped it out, suddenly not even remotely thirsty. He rinsed his mug quickly, noting Blaine’s silence but choosing not to comment further; it was already a low blow to bring _that_ kiss up, since Blaine had neither instigated it nor professed to enjoy it, but it had been playing on Kurt’s mind enough since Sunday.

Specifically, the way Blaine’s eyes had fluttered closed after a second, the twitch in his hand like he’d wanted to reach up and pull the angel closer, and—what had stung the most, a razor-sharp and jagged cluster at the base of Kurt’s throat—how the muscles in his jaw had clenched and tightened when, just for a moment or two, Blaine had kissed the angel back.

He’d been running hot and cold ever since, flirting shamelessly and then keeping his distance so subtly that Kurt couldn’t have called him out even if he’d wanted to. It was damnably frustrating, and a great part of the reason for Kurt’s sour mood.

“Kurt.”

 _Deep breath, Kurt._ “What?” he asked calmly, back still to Blaine.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Blaine said.

“You didn’t,” Kurt said as breezily as he could, turning and bracing himself on the counter behind him. “I think I might go for a walk, though. Seems a shame to waste such a beautiful night.”

“Even with the humidity?” Blaine asked with a nod to Kurt’s upswept hair, which had begun to droop despite regular re-applications of hairspray.

“Ah, it’s done for anyway,” Kurt lamented, and gathered the soft blanket draped across the chair behind the cab. Blaine was still standing in the open doorway, hands behind his back, and Kurt smirked as he approached him. Wanting to mess with him, just a little, he crowded into Blaine’s personal space, parting his lips just so and letting his gaze linger on Blaine’s mouth the perfect fraction too long. “I won’t be long. Movie when I get back?”

Blaine’s lips pursed in a reluctant smile, and Kurt was already on the second step down when he heard Blaine murmur, “Okay.”

As he made his way down the beach, his bare toes digging into the fine sand, he took a deep lungful of fresh ocean air. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, and the spill of colors in the sky was fading into a deep cornflower blue, Venus rising in the west. Despite the humidity, it was the second beautiful night he’d had in a row, and he walked to a place where the R.V. was well out of sight, until on his little stretch of shore, he was alone.

After spreading out the blanket and sitting down, he pulled his phone from his pocket and turned it over and over in his hands. He needed to talk to someone, try and work his way through everything before it all overwhelmed him. But judging by the time, April was about to go on stage somewhere in Brooklyn, Finn was already at work for his night shift, and being a Wednesday, his dad and Carole would be at Carole’s sister’s house for dinner.

The only other person he could think of was Blaine, and therein laid the problem. His thumb swiped back and forth, back and forth across the screen, clearing it of app icons and then restoring them, until he caught sight of the icon for his blog app. He paused only for a moment before tapping on it and going straight to the video capture option.

Squinting into the harsh glare of the flashlight as he turned his phone around—god, this would look like some dreadful _Blair Witch_ parody—he gave the camera a little wave.

“Sorry I haven’t updated for a while,” he said. “It’s a little difficult to find alone time when you’re on the road with your best friend almost twenty-four-seven. Looks like there’s a few more of you than my last update, so hello and welcome.

“Um… Well, we’re in St. Augustine, Florida, and heading down to Key West tomorrow. We had a four-hundred-mile drive in from Atlanta on Monday, which was exhausting. Today we checked out some of the local tourist stuff and stopped for lunch in this old hotel that has a café in what used to be the deep end of the pool, and then we ended up back here, where we’ve mostly been enjoying the beach and catching up on our workout routines and emails and calls home.”

Kurt paused, recalling his conversations with Andrew and John and how easy it had been to open up to them as strangers; he reminded himself that his modest number of followers were all exactly that—and how many of them were likely to watch his silly piece-to-camera videos, anyway?

“Blaine’s been acting… Strange. More than usual, I mean. Something happened at Pride in Atlanta. One of the, uh… One of the Free Hugs Angels kissed him, and for a second he looked like he was really into it, which—it hurt. And I wish it didn’t.

“The thing is, like I keep telling you guys, we’ve been best friends for so long that… I don’t want to risk everything we have, but right now I’m at the point where every time I look at him I want to kiss him, and it should be weird, right? It should be weird to think about him that way; it used to be!

“I don’t know what to do,” Kurt said miserably. Finding himself with no other words, he turned the phone back around and hit Upload, blinking as the impression of the flashlight seared behind his eyes eluded him and faded.

“I don’t know what to do,” he repeated, to no one but himself.

 

“Have you ever noticed how phallic Florida is?” Blaine asked the next day, glancing at the map of Florida Kurt had printed off and stuffed into the folder along with their campground booking.

“Is that all you ever think about?” Kurt asked irritably. They’d been on the road for the entire day contending with freeway traffic and passive-aggressive drivers, it was nearing sunset, and he’d almost reached the limit of his patience—not to mention the fact that the lyrics of the song Blaine had skipped to on Kurt’s ‘Sunny Skies’ playlist—The Colourist’s _[Wishing Wells](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/51676030375)—_ were dangerously close to the bone.

 _“Just follow what you feel, just follow what you feel,”_ was a message Kurt wasn’t particularly enamored of, given that he really had no idea how to begin deciphering the mess of what he was feeling.

“Look at it,” Blaine said, waving the map in front of the steering wheel. “No wonder they call it America’s Wang. Anyway, you’re one to talk.”

“As I was _saying,”_ Kurt intoned deliberately, reaching up to adjust his sunglasses, “everything happens for a reason.”

“Come on, Kurt. You don’t believe in any of that.”

“No, you’re misunderstanding me,” Kurt said, frustrated. Why did they always seem to be on two separate pages these days? “You _know_ I don’t believe in any of the spiritual stuff, but I do believe that everything that happens does so for a reason. History, simple as that. Z wouldn’t have happened without Y, which wouldn’t have happened without X, back and back. Look at _My Girl,_ for instance. Thomas Jay wouldn’t have gone back for Vada’s mood ring if she hadn’t dropped it, she wouldn’t have dropped it if they hadn’t been kicking around that beehive, and so on.”

“So what you’re really saying is that there isn’t actually any such thing as history,” Blaine said thoughtfully, and Kurt nodded with a smile.

“Right. Because one way or another, history is always present.”

“You know a little something of the world, don’t you?”

“Not really. I just know a little something of mine.”

They lapsed back into silence as Kurt concentrated on navigating them through the narrower streets and inside the campground, and after parking and checking in, they both jumped down from the cab with sighs of relief, stretching out their cramped joints and muscles.

When they turned off Duval Street and onto South, Blaine took Kurt’s hand and linked their fingers together, and Kurt’s pulse skittered.

He knew he’d been subdued since the previous night, lost inside his own indecision and wondering what to do next. He’d made peace with the fact that he wanted more—so much more—of Blaine than what he was getting, and what he’d taken in Philadelphia. What was really getting to him was the fact that although he had recollections of what Blaine felt like, the weight and measure of him, he knew nothing of the taste of Blaine’s lips, or the pressure and temperature of his mouth.

He also knew that Blaine had taken note of his shifting mood—it was clear in that same languid tension Kurt had been noticing increasingly frequently since Rhode Island. Perhaps even longer ago, were he to trace it back. No Z without Y, no Y without X, no X without—

“Wow,” Blaine said, interrupting Kurt’s thoughts.

Standing before them was the tall concrete buoy declaring the ground beneath their feet as the southernmost point in the continental U.S., and Key West as ‘Home of the Sunset.’ Behind it, the sky was appropriately smeared with pink and orange and yellow, the sun lazily descending in a halo of palest blue.

“Take a picture!” Blaine exclaimed with all the excitement of a child, and he grinned off to the side of the buoy, bracing himself against it with one hand, his left foot crossed over his right. After Kurt had captured Blaine’s brilliant grin and forwarded the picture to Blaine’s mom, he noticed a new email in his notifications and tapped it open.

It was an anonymous comment on his video post, and the only text was [a YouTube link](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/51676277009), signed with the initial F. He tapped the link absentmindedly, eyes lingering on Blaine as he snapped pictures of the marker, the sunset, and the weathered plaque on the low wall that separated the ground from the ocean below.

When the song began, blaring from his phone at top volume, Kurt almost jumped out of his skin. He circled around behind the buoy and let it cast him in shadow to listen in private and regain his breath. He’d been meaning to disable anonymous comments entirely; he’d received a few on his blog before, but they’d been spam, links to diet pills and discount codes and cure-alls for erectile dysfunction. They hadn’t been anything like this: a simple link to a song he knew and adored. Second only to film, music was his great love—and this song… This song was perfect.

Because anything really _could_ happen, couldn’t it? What if what had happened between them in Philadelphia wasn’t a total mistake, simply the prelude to Kurt finally giving in to what his instincts had been telling him for weeks, now? _What if, what if, what if…_

“What are you doing? Come see this!” Blaine called, and Kurt took a deep breath.

He stepped out of the shadows and moved to Blaine’s left so that Blaine was silhouetted against the fading sun, light casting the top layer of his curls auburn. He stretched his arms up over his head, letting out the sigh of a man satisfied and content. Kurt felt as if he were watching Blaine through a long overdue pair of brand new eyes; he knew there was rescue in those arms, and suddenly he wanted to smudge himself into them until he felt safe.

_“Yeah, since we found out, since we found out that anything could happen…”_

Blaine turned away from the vista of the sky and pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head to look down at Kurt, his smile beatific and his eyes sparkling with warmth and light. As he leaned forward and held out his hand, he looked… Beautiful.

Kurt took Blaine’s hand and stepped up onto the wall, the repetitive build of the lyrics wrapping him up in recklessness and resolve, because this was it, wasn’t it? This was the real movie moment where the rest of them paled in comparison. Providence had been a premature disappointment; the Brooklyn Bridge belonged to two people that didn’t exist; Philadelphia had been a rushed and disastrous taste, nothing more.

The simple fact was that Kurt didn’t want to leave any more missed opportunities in his wake. He wanted Blaine. Every single moment they’d come close, every near miss, every mistake Kurt had chosen not to make had been leading to this, hadn’t it? No Z without Y.

_“Anything could happen, anything could—“_

The music exploded and so did Kurt, his stomach caught in his chest as he hooked three fingers into the collar of Blaine’s t-shirt and crushed their lips together in a kiss that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

It only took a moment before Blaine was kissing back, inhaling sharply through his nose as he pressed forward, his hands flying up to frame Kurt’s face. It was pressure and give in perfect balance, exactly what Kurt had been wanting but not letting himself have, because this was the first brick from the wall of their friendship, the others tumbling beneath it, and as Blaine’s lips parted, they tumbled down on top of Kurt, and he pulled back.

“Fuck,” he whispered, looking away as Blaine’s eyes opened. “I’m s—“

“Don’t you dare,” Blaine ordered, carding his fingers into the hair at the back of Kurt’s head and yanking him down into a messy, hungry kiss that burned him in its intensity, teeth catching his bottom lip. And at once Kurt felt it as if it were something physical: a click, a slot back into place, a page turning so that they were both back on the same one. One hand still holding onto his phone as the song continued to play, he scrambled for purchase with the other, looping his arm around Blaine’s neck and pulling him flush.

When Blaine broke the kiss, he simply said, “R.V. Now,” and took Kurt by the hand, pulling him down from the wall and back onto the street.

His heart pounded in his chest as they ran hand in hand back to the R.V., Kurt barely keeping pace as Blaine led him there. Two kisses and he suddenly felt like he was standing on the edge of the world, the ground beneath his feet tipping, tipping, tipping him over the edge into a giddy sense of oblivion, and with the drama of the moment broken as he finally remembered himself and shut off the song, he grinned up at the sky.

No sooner was the door to the R.V. closed behind them than Blaine’s mouth was back on his, his tongue tracing the line of Kurt’s lips before plunging inside. They stumbled sideways up the steps, the inside of the R.V. growing darker in the fading daylight. As they finally managed to make it to the bedroom, still locked at the mouth, Blaine pushed him up against the bathroom door, linking their fingers and pressing them into the wood either side of Kurt’s head.

“So this is happening now,” he said, his voice holding a note of desire that Kurt had never heard before. He shivered as he breathed heavily, Blaine’s face mere inches from his own and his eyes obsidian. “No going back?”

“No going back,” Kurt said, pushing his hips forward into Blaine’s and whining in the back of his throat, repeating to himself over and over and over, _it’s just a sex thing._

“Fuck, okay,” Blaine whispered, pressing himself even more tightly against Kurt for a second, both of them moaning at the contact and friction, before pulling him into the bedroom and flicking on the light. Kurt pushed Blaine back onto the bed and looked at him for a moment, took in the sun-blush left on his skin and the rumpled front of his shirt where he’d had it gripped in his fist.

The impatient fire died but the wanton heat remained, and with his eyes locked on Blaine’s, he slowly followed, knees either side of Blaine’s hips on top of the covers. He leant forward, tracing Blaine’s bottom lip with his index finger and biting back a groan when Blaine sucked it into his mouth; exactly what Kurt had wanted him to do that overtired, hazy night in Vermont.

_Have we always been waiting for this?_

Kurt replaced his finger with his lips, cupping Blaine’s jaw to feel the shift and clench he’d been picturing since Atlanta. It was slow, the sounds Blaine made in the back of his throat hitting Kurt like pinpricks as he kissed Blaine harder, savoring the taste while Blaine’s hands gripped and squeezed at his sides, moving up and underneath his shirt. He gasped into Blaine’s mouth at the touch, firm and strong.

“God, why haven’t we always been doing this?” he whined, rolling his hips down onto Blaine’s and pressing their foreheads together, their breath mingling between them. Blaine groaned low in response, tugging Kurt’s shirt up over his head and tossing it before letting his fingers drift over Kurt’s nipples and down over his ribcage.

Kurt shivered and surged forward to recapture Blaine’s lips, and he’d never kissed anyone like this. Everyone he’d ever been with had been a rush, even his first, and he felt like he was learning all over again, sweet tremors chasing one another up and down his spine and tingling, all the way up into his lips as Blaine kissed a new life into him.

They undressed one another in increments, trading off until there was nothing left of them but skin and flesh and Kurt’s hips working circles into Blaine’s. Blaine fell backwards, taking Kurt with him. His fingers gripped the back of Kurt’s neck like a lifeline, and every time his screwed-shut eyes opened, they stared straight into Kurt.

“Blaine—shit,” Kurt managed, feeling the sensation begin to build in his fingers and toes.

“Come on, Kurt,” Blaine said, his pace quickening and his cock dragging against Kurt’s, palms kneading into the flesh of Kurt’s ass as he bared his throat and his back arched off the covers.

“Are you—you close?”

“Fuck—yes, just don’t… Jesus, don’t stop, I’ve—I’ve wanted this…”

“Tell me,” Kurt panted into the hollow of Blaine’s neck, sweat beading at his temples, and he spread his knees wider, thrust down harder, chasing and chasing and chasing.

“Couldn’t—ah—get Philadelphia off my mind, you… The way you looked, fuck, I— _Kurt…”_

Blaine’s entire body tensed as he came, a soundless cry in his slack mouth, and Kurt bit down hard onto his collarbone as he wound up and up and up, coiling tightly and then unspooling like thread.

The comedown was calm like Kurt had never felt, Blaine’s hands finding Kurt’s face to pull him closer, their lazy lips fitting together and sliding apart. Kurt climbed off him carefully, collapsing onto his side and pushing his face into the pillow, blood rushing through his head in a buzz that dulled everything.

He looked at Blaine, and found him smiling.

“Tell me something,” Blaine panted, his chest—gloriously, gloriously bare and oh, Kurt was going to take his time mapping out every last dip and contour—rapidly rising and falling as he tried to catch his breath. Kurt gazed at him through heavy eyes and turned fully onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow and looking at Blaine expectantly. “This was just about the sex, right? There isn’t something more you want to tell me?”

 _Of course there’s something more, you idiot,_ Kurt wanted to say, but the three seconds he hesitated let that old fear back in, and it was just enough to slot a couple of bricks back into place, the light higher and out of reach.

Heart hammering in his chest, he met Blaine’s eyes squarely and forced out the words, “No. What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip.”

 

**Distance: 3,230 miles**

*

**Day 033: Friday 19th October, 2012  
Treading Water (Alabama)**

_“So we’ve got it narrowed down to_ Big Fish, _a low-budget post-apocalyptic movie, and Borat?”_

_“Yup. Not gonna lie; I think your Tim Burton addiction is going to be getting a healthy injection in Alabama.”_

_“Well, it’s supposed to be really good. And your ‘future husband’ is in it, after all…”_

 

Blaine’s first time had been a mistake.

The guy’s name was Tyler Pace—one of Blaine’s roommates in London, an intern on the same program, and originally from Cork, Ireland. His uniform was t-shirts in muted colors underneath a boxy black blazer, and ratty jeans that would have appalled Kurt. He had small black gauges in his ears and wore his bright red hair shot through with blond, shaved at the sides and in a messy approximation of a James Dean-esque quiff on top. Obscuring his pale gray eyes were a pair of thick, oversized black glasses with red arms, and there was always a pair of Skullcandy headphones around his neck blaring U2 and Stiff Little Fingers.

Tyler appeared, at first, to be a patchwork of personalities all clamoring for dominion over one body, and that was one of the things that Blaine had been immediately drawn to. Tyler had been an enigma, keeping mostly to himself and only ever speaking when spoken to or when he had something particularly important to say. All of Blaine’s questions had gone unasked, and he had contented himself with mostly being in the dark, even if Tyler’s eyes had sometimes lingered on him as if waiting for him to say something.

Blaine had scoffed every time Lucy told him that Tyler had a crush on him.

The night they slept together, a few days before the beginning of their Christmas break, Tyler had knocked on Blaine’s bedroom door mere moments after Blaine had just disconnected from a blazing fight with Kurt over Skype. The walls in the flat were old and thin, and everyone had probably heard Blaine’s placatory tone escalating into angered yelling, louder and louder until he’d eventually told Kurt that if he was going to be like that, then he was glad he wasn’t coming home for the holidays, before hanging up and dropping his head into his hands.

“Everything alright there?” Tyler had asked quietly, in his softly lilting Irish accent, when Blaine opened the door. Perhaps it was the concern in his voice; perhaps it was the way his eyes kept dropping seemingly involuntarily to Blaine’s mouth, or perhaps it was the fact that he was Kurt’s polar opposite—Blaine still didn’t know what had possessed him—but whatever the reason, Blaine had stepped forward and kissed him.

One thing had led to another, and even though Tyler was sweet about it afterward, something irrevocably changed between them. Blaine suddenly noticed the absence of lingering looks that had never even seemed to registered before. Tyler started talking to him more, but never about anything real. For the first time, Blaine had realized that the mystery surrounding Tyler had been nothing but the unresolved sexual tension between them.

The second time it happened, Blaine had been drunk and in pieces over the news of his grandfather’s death, and on Tyler’s part it was probably no more than a pity fuck. That was what it had felt like: quick, messy, and a race to the finish.

With Kurt, it had lasted hours. They had traded a litany of deep kisses that spanned their movements under the covers until they were both spent, and Blaine had fallen asleep with Kurt’s face buried in the hollow of his neck.

The next evening, when Kurt finally pulled up to the campground’s dump station in Ozark, Alabama—a town Blaine had never heard of before—the sun had long since set. They had been on the road from Key West all day, driving in two shifts and stopping only for an hour in Gainesville. They were both exhausted, not only from the miles they had covered, but from their shared lack of sleep the night before.

Silence enveloped them as Kurt switched off the engine, stretching his arms up over his head and rolling his wrists, and Blaine had to remind himself that he actually had permission to look now. So he did, taking in the lean lines of Kurt’s body and picturing the miles of lightly freckled pale skin that he knew lay beneath his shirt and jeans.

If it weren’t for the exhaustion, Blaine might have done a victory dance or something equally as embarrassing.

“What are you looking at?” Kurt asked around a yawn that he stifled behind his hand. Everything about him screamed tiredness, and Blaine reached over to let the backs of his fingers drift over Kurt’s cheek.

“You, sleepy-head,” he said, smiling fondly when Kurt leaned into the touch. “Do you think you’ll stay awake long enough for us to watch our movie?”

“I’ll be fine once I’ve had coffee… And stretched. God, I _ache,”_ Kurt complained, turning sideways in his seat and dropping his cheek to the headrest.

“Go stretch,” Blaine said, unclipping his seat belt and standing up. “My turn to empty the tanks. Don’t be too jealous.”

Kurt wrinkled his nose.

“Aren’t you jealous at _all?”_ Blaine asked. “The hoses, and watching the gauges, and the disposable gloves… I’d be jealous.”

“If I had the energy, I would be side-eying you so hard right now,” Kurt murmured, his eyes drifting heavily closed.

“Hey, come on. Up,” Blaine said, taking Kurt’s hands and pulling him to his feet. He swayed for a second before finding his equilibrium, and offered Blaine a weak but grateful smile. Quite unable to resist the impulse, Blaine rocked forward and caught Kurt’s sleepy, slackening mouth in a fleeting kiss; both a request for and promise of more. He knew he was playing a dangerous game, particularly in light of what Kurt had said the night before, but he couldn’t yet find it within himself to care. What lay between them had a time limit on it, now—an expiration, dated the day they would arrive back in Maine—and Blaine was going to take whatever he was given.

Leaving Kurt and his soft smile, Blaine grabbed his iPod from its dashboard dock and headed outside, donning a pair of disposable gloves as he went. Soundtracked by a loop of Coldplay’s _[Clocks](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/51676454241)_ and its unforgettable piano riff—the one he had learned by heart in tenth grade and played so often that, one Sunday morning after a sleepover, Kurt had told him he’d been drumming it on top of the blankets in his sleep—he set about emptying the tanks. First the black water, then the gray, running water rinses in between and finishing the job by dumping a liberal amount of treatment into each.

“If there was even the slightest spill,” Kurt said when Blaine was back inside and leaning against the frame of the open bedroom door, “you’re sleeping on the couch.”

Blaine grinned, docking the iPod by the bed with the song still softly playing. Kurt was stretched out on his stomach, still in his clothes and half of his face pushed into the pillow. He regarded Blaine through one bleary eye.

“Coffee?” Blaine offered.

“Mm… No. Too comfy.”

“Massage?”

“Oh my god. _Please.”_

Chuckling, Blaine climbed onto the bed and straddled Kurt’s thighs, blinking and swallowing as he gently tugged Kurt’s shirt from the waistband of his jeans. With a little maneuvering, he managed to relieve Kurt of every last stitch of clothing from the upper half of his body.

Skin, miles of it, and he was allowed to look and touch and savor every inch.

He rubbed his hands together to warm them up, and started with Kurt’s shoulders. Kurt melted beneath his ministrations almost immediately, letting out a loud and positively obscene groan of pleasure.

“Oh my _god,_ that feels _amazing,”_ Kurt sighed as Blaine gently began working out a knot at the top of his shoulder blade. “If I’d known you were so good with your hands, I might not have taken so long.”

“Why _did_ you take so long?” Blaine asked after a moment, careful to keep his tone light and conversational.

Kurt paused, then said simply, “It was totally weird. And then suddenly, it wasn’t.”

“Obviously I just became too hard to resist,” Blaine said, taking Kurt’s arms and gently pushing them up so that he could wrap them around his pillow.

“Hard was right,” Kurt replied wryly, arching his hips off the bed in a quick snap that sent a jolt through Blaine. Shaking it off, he redoubled his concentration. He dragged the heel of his hand up the length of Kurt’s spine, a light flush of red left in its wake as blood rushed to the surface of the skin, and then worked both thumbs in circles between Kurt’s shoulder blades. “Anyway, you—oh, _right_ there—you took your time as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rhode Island? The Brooklyn Bridge?” Kurt reminded him. “Come on, B.”

The nickname fell from between Kurt’s lips so easily that it was as if it hadn’t been years since he’d used it, and Blaine felt a rush of nostalgic fondness in his chest. He eased off on the pressure for a moment, letting his fingers drift back and forth across the breadth of Kurt’s shoulders.

“And what about Delaware?” he asked carefully, knowing that he probably wasn’t going to get any answers, not with such a wall already between them. It was translucent—almost invisible, really—but tangible, and daubed with the words, ‘boundary line, please do not cross.’

“Can we just… Forget Delaware?”

“Sure,” Blaine said, even though he knew it would take a long time to forget the fear in Kurt’s eyes that day; a storm reflecting the rain pounding down around them. Changing tact, he leaned forward and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to Kurt’s shoulder. Against his skin, he murmured, “Something else I’m curious about, though.”

“Oh?”

“What number am I?”

A beat, a shift, and then, “Thirteen.”

“Lucky thirteen,” Blaine said with a chuckle. He sat back and pressed his thumbs into the base of Kurt’s neck. “It was what, four before I left? Wow. I really _was_ cramping your style.”

“No, you—mmm, that’s good… It wasn’t ever like that, not really,” Kurt said quietly. “You were enough.”

Blaine breathed in slowly, leaning his weight onto his thumbs and working out the knots in Kurt’s muscles. Kurt shuddered underneath him when the tension finally dissipated, and this time when Blaine leaned forward, Kurt twisted and hooked his arm around Blaine’s neck, dragging him down to lie next to him.

“Better?” Blaine asked. Kurt nodded, turning fully onto his side and looking remarkably more awake than before. “Good.”

“Was last night a one-time thing?” Kurt asked suddenly, and Blaine blinked dumbly at him for a moment.

Carefully, he asked, “Do you want it to be?”

“No,” Kurt said. “Do you?”

“Not when you were the least terrifying you’ve ever looked this morning. No fire, pitchforks _or_ death.”

“Be serious.”

“No, Kurt,” Blaine said as reassuringly as he could, curving his palm into the dip of Kurt’s waist. “I don’t want it to be a one-time thing.”

With a flash of a wicked smirk, Kurt pulled himself on top of Blaine, hands either side of his head on the pillow. Looking at him with a glint of mischief in his eyes, he leaned down to murmur against Blaine’s lips, “So what do you propose we do about that?”

Blaine surged upward to drag Kurt into a deep kiss, shivering as Kurt cupped his jaw and let out a breathy little hum. Without pulling away, he blindly reached out to switch off the song he still had playing on a loop—he didn’t want to hear about confusion or ticking clocks or missed opportunities.

He just wanted Kurt.

 

**Distance: 3,996 miles**

*

**Day 035: Sunday 21st October, 2012  
In Flux (Mississippi)**

_“All I’m saying is that we need more horror films on this list.”_

_“Kurt, please just—look, I know. I know we do, but you know how much Tobin Bell freaks me out...”_

_“Alright, alright. How about_ The Ladykillers?”

 

_“…out in North Carolina and then there’s Madison, Wisconsin and Olympia in Washington—“_

“Blaine,” Kurt whined, cracking an eye and searching for Blaine’s face in the dim light.

 _“Phoenix, Arizona and Lansing, Michigan,”_ Blaine continued, his voice coming softly from somewhere behind Kurt. Limbs heavy, it was with what felt like a Herculean effort that he managed to prop himself up enough to turn his head to face the other way, where Blaine was stretched out next to him on top of the bed covers. A wide smile stretching his full lips, Blaine reached down and linked their hands, singing, _“Here’s Honolulu; Hawaii’s a joy, Clarksdale, Mississippi—“_

“It’s Jackson, not Clarksdale,” Kurt corrected him, voice raspy and still thick with sleep.

“I know. But we’re _in_ Clarksdale, now,” Blaine said.

“We are? You drove the rest of the way?” Kurt asked, tensing his body to stretch as Blaine shrugged. “What time is it?”

“Almost midnight,” Blaine answered, and unlinked their hands to trace a fingertip along the line of Kurt’s brow. “How’s your head?”

“Better. Remind me not to watch our movies in the dark,” Kurt answered, and buried his face in his pillow to stifle a yawn. He shivered pleasantly when Blaine’s hand dropped to his neck, a ghost of sensation that he steeled himself against chasing: it was late, and they had plans.

“I’ve never noticed just how many freckles you have,” Blaine said absently, dotting them out with his fingers, and Kurt chuckled as he turned onto his side and tucked his elbow underneath his head.

“Remember that time you stole your mom’s eyebrow pencil and drew them all over your face because you wanted us to be twins?”

“Oh, God, don’t remind me,” Blaine groaned. “I looked like I had the chicken pox.”

“And then she went _white_ when she saw you and started chasing you around with the thermometer,” Kurt said, shaking with laughter. “I haven’t thought about that in _forever.”_

“Thank heaven for small mercies. You used to give me hell about it,” Blaine said, his smile easy and fond. “Anyway, time to get up, Sleeping Beauty. We don’t wanna be late.”

As Blaine made to move away, Kurt caught his hand and pulled him close to press their lips together: an impulsive, sweet, and lingering kiss that felt timeless, like he’d possessed the knowledge of how Blaine kissed for far longer than three days.

 _Has it really only been three days?_ he thought.

Blaine sighed into the kiss, tension Kurt hadn’t even known was there leaching from his muscles, and just before he climbed off the bed, he whispered against Kurt’s lips, “Later.”

Kurt rolled onto his back and laid there for a moment, listening to the sounds of Blaine moving around the R.V. There was music playing, something with a dark, catchy synthesized riff that Kurt recognized as a song from the playlist Blaine had brought back from London— _[Changed The Way You Kiss Me](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/52297484424),_ he thought, and almost started to hum along until he caught himself. Shaking his head, he threw off the covers and walked around the bed to the small, mirrored closets set along the back wall of the bedroom. Out of the far left he pulled a simple white t-shirt and a thick, red and black plaid jacket. With a rueful smile at his own reflection, he plucked once at the front of his threadbare sleep shirt—the one Blaine had bought him for his twentieth birthday: charcoal black and bearing the slogan _‘don’t need a permit for these guns,’_ with arrows pointing left and right—and pulled it over his head.

When he caught Blaine watching him in the mirror, he called out, “Later, Casanova,” and carried on dressing himself, trying to put all thoughts of ‘later’ out of his mind.

Sex with Blaine was… Well, it was _sex_ with _Blaine._

On the surface, at least—and that was where Kurt wanted to keep it. Nothing deeper, no hidden meaning belying every word or look or movement, and absolutely no mentioning just how dangerous what they were doing probably was. No, if it was kept strictly on the surface then nothing would change, and that was what Kurt wanted more than anything.

He didn’t want to examine too deeply, for instance, the pleasant hum and buzz that pooled in his limbs whenever he caught Blaine looking at him like he’d hung the moon and hand-dotted the sky with stars. That would verge way too closely on something he didn’t want to be, something he’d never been to anyone. He was the player, the quick fuck, the sure thing, and he liked it that way.

In his second year of college, he’d tried the relationship thing with a guy called Max whom he’d been pursuing for a while—and who _insisted_ on dates first. Kurt had managed to stick it out for eleven months, having fallen hard and fast into something that was like love but that he’d never wanted to fully give himself over to. It would have been easy, but it would also have a felt a little like dying because there was love but too much, like being smothered by it instead of wrapped up in it.

And then, after a week of fighting about Kurt’s numerous shortcomings, Max decided to show Kurt just how well he was meeting expectations. Kurt had showed up at Max’s apartment with white tulips and a promise to do better on his tongue, only to find that Max had already found the affection he’d been seeking in the arms and lips of another.

The next day, Blaine had received the email calling him to London for his internship, and Kurt had learned once and for all what he was really worth.

He wasn’t vain enough to think that Blaine’s leaving had anything to do with him, of course, but it was that it seemed so very, very easy for Blaine to leave him behind—both on the day he left, and during the course of their year apart.

Before that year, Kurt had taken Blaine for granted. He knew it, and so did Blaine. Kurt had always been content enough to spend time alone—he’d needed it more than anything, at times, but the memory of the crushing loneliness he’d felt with Blaine so far away kept him grounded, and grateful to have him back. He had to hold onto their friendship at all costs, and push everything else into the corner of his mind where he kept all the things he never wanted to think about.

“Kurt, are you—? Whoa. You look nothing like yourself,” Blaine said as he came back into the bedroom, cutting through Kurt’s melancholic reminiscing.

“That’s the point,” he replied shortly, appraising his appearance in the mirror before turning to Blaine. “We’re in the south, after all.”

“Yeah, but—“ Blaine started, but Kurt cut him off with a swift kiss.

“Are you going to serenade me?” he asked, gesturing to the guitar slung across Blaine’s back.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Blaine replied as he adjusted Kurt’s lapel. “Come on.”

They were parked only a short walk away from the crossroads, but with the light chill riding on the night breeze, Kurt was grateful for his thick jacket.

“What does ‘chilling on my Jack Jones’ mean?” he asked after a minute or so, the bewildering lyric from the song stuck in his head.

“It’s Cockney rhyming slang,” Blaine explained after a moment. “It means ‘on my own’. God, I had the worst time trying to understand Tom when I first got over there.”

“Which one is Tom, again?”

“He’s the one who wants to be a music supervisor.”

“Is he the one who—with the double-jointed thumbs?” Kurt asked, trying to separate out the faceless names in his mind. He’d heard so many stories about Blaine’s friends from London over the summer that it was like being there and yet not, like he knew these people but never would—not until they each rose to the top of their respective fields, like everyone else who had studied under Serafino.

“No, that’s Steve. He’s also the one who switched me on to that song.”

“Cinematographer, right?”

“Yep. He’s got nothing on you, though.”

Kurt smiled down at his Chucks for a moment, letting the good overtake his frustration surrounding ‘the whole London thing,’ as he referred to it—it stung, even now—and capitalized on the opportunity to change the subject.

“As much as I love film,” he said, “it’s kind of nice to _not_ have to talk about it constantly. You know? To not have to dissect and deconstruct every single little detail.”

“Even though that’s exactly what we’ve been doing with every movie we’ve watched,” Blaine said, bumping their shoulders together. The movement jostled his guitar, and he righted it with a quick tug on the strap.

“Yes, but we’re not being _forced_ to. No term papers or projects to show around and get feedback on.”

“It’s just easy, right? At our own pace.”

“Another reason I’m happy we’re doing this,” Kurt said.

“But the main reason’s the sex, right?” Blaine asked, leaning over conspiratorially, and Kurt tensed so that he didn’t duck his head out of the curious sense of modesty that had been settling over him since Key West.

“Of course,” he agreed, and took a sip of water from the Camelbak he’d borrowed from Blaine.

“Look, there it is!” Blaine said, pointing ahead to a fairly nondescript, triangular traffic island at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49. Out of a clump of trees rose a large sign bearing three guitars atop the legend ‘The Crossroads,’ their color drained under the orange of the streetlamps. There were no cars on the roads, and save for the increasing wind, there was silence.

“It’s like we’re the only two people in the world,” Kurt thought aloud. Blaine gave him that look again, the one that electrified Kurt’s very blood, and pulled him across the street to stand beneath the sign.

“So what would you make a deal with the devil for?” Blaine asked as he pulled out his phone to take a picture.

 _You,_ Kurt thought, and shook himself. _Get it together._ “Right now, taking a bath in a real bathtub. I miss my Sunday Soak. What about you?”

Without missing a beat, Blaine answered, “A box of Double Dip Crunch.”

“Really? I never tried it,” Kurt said.

“It was only the greatest cereal the world has ever known,” Blaine said, and sighed heavily. “They had something similar in London, but it wasn’t the same. Honey Nut Shreddies, I think—like Quaker Shredded Wheat.”

“Did you feel more at home there than you do here?” Kurt asked abruptly, looking at the way Blaine was rubbing his thumb along his forefinger. It was something he only ever did when talking about London, and something that gave him a distinctly dichotomous air, like there were two separate versions of him: the one whose heart belonged to London, and the one whose heart belonged to—

That belonged to this—this nomadic life and the search for home.

“I haven’t ever really felt at home anywhere,” Blaine said. “But less so here.”

Kurt smiled wanly and buried his hands in his pockets with a shiver. “I believe you owe me a serenade, good sir,” he reminded him.

“And I believe I told you I wouldn’t dream of it,” Blaine replied, but was already swinging his guitar around and flexing his fingers. “How about some blues, since we’re here?”

“I don’t know; wouldn’t that be bad luck? It’s a good thing we’re not here on Halloween, what with all the spirits walking the earth again,” Kurt bantered, casting around an exaggerated glance. Blaine simply smiled, pulled a guitar pick from his pocket, and [began to play](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/52297560075).

 _“I got ramblin’, I got ramblin’ on my mind,”_ he sang, and Kurt couldn’t help but laugh. _“I got ramblin’, I got ramblin’ all on my mind. Hate to leave my baby, but you treats me so unkind.”_

Blaine seemed to settle into the song’s unusual rhythm almost effortlessly, and all at once, Kurt could see the change in him. It had been subtle; something in the way he’d been holding himself just a little bit taller the past couple of days. _Like he used to,_ Kurt thought. When Blaine had been performing with the Cogs at The Cannery, he’d almost been leaning forward, still trying to convince Kurt to go even though he’d long since agreed. In his father’s basement, he’d been sitting hunched over his guitar, working himself through his regret. Now, his chin was tipped up, his shoulders down and that old shine back in his eyes. He was just… Blaine again.

 _“Runnin’ down to the station, catch the first mail train I see. I got the blues about Mister So-and-So, and the child got the blues about me,”_ he sang, circling Kurt with stilted steps and slowly crowding him underneath the tree. Under the dark cover of the leaves above their heads, Blaine’s eyes were nothing more than dark smudges, and yet Kurt could feel them locked on his own. Blaine began to strum more softly, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper.

Despite Kurt’s small height advantage, in that moment Blaine seemed disarmingly tall. A few seconds after his back hit the trunk of the tree, Blaine wound the song up, the last notes fading into the charged air between them. He was breathing heavily, matching Kurt exhale for exhale, and Kurt reached forward to slowly push the guitar out of his hands and turn it to settle against his back. As easily as if they’d been doing it for years, Blaine hooked his arms around Kurt’s waist beneath the flannel of his jacket, his cool hands finding their way to the skin at the small of his back.

“How’s that for a serenade?”

Kurt’s huff of laughter was shaky with anticipation. “I don’t think you can serenade someone with the blues unless you’re Clapton.”

Blaine inched closer, rocking forward to whisper into Kurt’s ear, “I’ll sing you a love song if that’s what you really want.”

Caught between a spike of fear at just what Blaine could do to him and feeling like an eager, wide-eyed groupie, Kurt tipped Blaine’s chin up and kissed him. Blaine wrapped his arms more tightly around him and blistering heat seeped through Kurt’s clothes, his skin, his flesh and muscle all the way down to his bones. It was searing, adding to the welt forming somewhere deep in Kurt’s chest.

It was a claim he couldn’t ever hope to honor.

He could take Blaine’s body, even though he couldn’t take his heart. And that would just have to do.

 

**Distance: 4,418 miles**

*

**Day 036: Monday 22nd October, 2012  
Past Misdemeanors (Tennessee)**

_“What are we thinking for Tennessee?”_

_“How about_ The Green Mile?”

_“Mm. We did say we’d leave it for later. Okay, sure.”_

_“You’ve reached the voicemail of Alice Cooke. I’m currently unavailable, so please leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”_

“Hey, it’s me—“

“Sweetheart?”

Blaine smiled, sinking back into the couch and watching the world go by through the window opposite. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “How are you?”

“Happy to hear from you, oh prodigal son of mine,” she said, and Blaine grinned even wider. It had been a week or so since they’d last spoken, and he’d known that if they’d gone on much longer without speaking, she’d be putting out a Code Adam. “And you? How are you and Kurt doing?”

“We’re fine. Am I catching you at a bad time?”

“Not at all! No, I’m just finishing up a couple of reports, so I’ve been letting my calls go to voicemail.”

“Any big storms heading in?” Blaine asked, absently tapping his foot along to the beat of [_Blue Suede Shoes_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/52297609625) when he caught it faintly over the deep and constant rumble of the R.V.’s engine.

“Sunny skies here, but there’s something forming out in the Caribbean that we think might get upgraded to a tropical storm soon,” Alice said, a note of barely-masked excitement in her voice. Blaine knew very few people who loved their job as much as his meteorologist mother did, and ever since completing her training as a SKYWARN severe weather spotter, she’d been going into work each morning with a brightness about her the likes of which Blaine hadn’t seen for years.

“Oh yeah? Where’s it headed?”

“We don’t know just yet; we’re waiting for the NHC to confirm, but we should have a report by five. Anyway, enough about the _weather!_ Where are you boys?”

“Mom, we’re on the way…” Blaine began, pausing for effect, “to Graceland.”

“Graceland?” Alice breathed. “Oh, honey… Will you take lots of pictures for me?”

“Of course, Mom. I know how you love Elvis,” Blaine said fondly. “I’ll get you something from the gift shop and send it home next time we stop at a post office.”

“You’re a good boy,” Alice said.

“I try.”

“So what have you boys been up to? Anything exciting?”

Blaine bit his lip, wondering how much to tell her. He knew she’d been hoping for years that he and Kurt would “end this silly ‘just friends’ charade,” but despite the numerous times they’d had sex at this point, they weren’t boyfriends. There wasn’t a label for what they were—not one that wasn’t so reductive that Blaine was comfortable with it, at least.

“Honey?”

“I’m here, sorry,” he said, standing up and moving toward the bedroom. He slid the door mostly closed behind him and sat down heavily on the bed. “Um, Mom… Kurt and I, we…”

There was a long pause on the line, and then, “Are you boys being safe?”

“Mom!” Blaine yelped indignantly, his face growing hot.

“Oh hush, honey. I have a right to ask,” Alice said.

“Yes, Mom, we’re being safe,” Blaine grumbled.

“Good. Now tell me _everything!_ I’ve been waiting years for you two to get your acts together!”

“Mom, we’re not—together, we’re just…” Blaine trailed off, swallowing hard. He didn’t particularly want to examine it too closely, not when he didn’t fully understand it himself—and he didn’t particularly want to tell his mother that he and Kurt were just having sex. He cleared his throat and, feeling inexplicably like he was telling a bald-faced lie as he did so, said succinctly, “We’re just seeing how things go.”

“I see. Well, that’s… I’m happy for you, honey,” Alice said, her words stilted but backed by a warmth that somehow reassured Blaine. “Just be good to each other, you hear me? I’ve seen you two apart, and it’s not pretty.”

“Oh my god, please don’t be talking about when Burt took Kurt to Missouri for that fishing trip,” Blaine said. “I was _eight,_ Mom.”

“No, I just mean that I’ve seen it from both sides, and…” Alice trailed off, and took a deep breath as Blaine tried to puzzle out her meaning. “It may not be entirely healthy, but being apart isn’t good for either of you, and I’d hate to see you get your hearts broken if this isn’t want you both want.”

“What do you mean, you’ve seen it from both sides?” Blaine asked.

“While you were in London,” Alice said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “We’d have Kurt over for dinner once a week. He just looked so sad, honey, especially when you weren’t able to make it home for Christmas. After that… Most weeks he’d go up to your room after dinner and I’d hear him listening to that song you love, the one from that Zooey Deschanel movie.”

 _“Sweet Disposition?”_ Blaine asked, swallowing hard against the sudden fracture in his mind. He looked at the mostly closed bedroom door, a single beam of light peeking through from the living area, and remembered lying on his single bed on Christmas Eve last year, listening to When I Fall In Love on a loop for two hours—Kurt would never admit to a soul that it was his favorite song, Blaine knew, but he’d heard Kurt surreptitiously turning up the volume whenever it got played on Brunswick’s oldies station enough times to know that it was. “I, um… I didn’t know about that.”

“Well, of course you didn’t, honey. Kurt wouldn’t want to upset you, and I’m sure he knew you were missing him just as much,” Alice said. “But that’s why I’m telling you. I just want you to be happy.”

“I’m trying,” Blaine replied. Quiet suddenly fell around him like the dropping of a curtain, and he cleared his throat again. “Mom, I think we’re here so I’d better get going. We have—tickets for the tour and all, so…”

“Don’t forget about those pictures,” Alice reminded him, and Blaine nodded.

“I won’t. Love you.”

“I love you too, honey.”

Blaine hung up feeling by turns miserable, confused, and peculiarly buoyed up. As he emerged from the bedroom and made his way toward the front of the vehicle, he caught sight of Kurt standing in the cab, leafing through the folder from the glove compartment and extracting print-outs for both their booking with the Memphis-Graceland R.V. park, and the tour of Graceland itself. His look was subdued again: straight leg, vintage wash jeans and a nondescript white t-shirt under a black military jacket with tabbed shoulders. When he turned around, a smile curving his lips as his eyes found Blaine’s, he saw that Kurt had added a small pin above his chest pocket: the American flag.

“Aren’t you laying it on a little thick?” he asked, gesturing to the pin, and Kurt shrugged.

“Why not go all out? It’s not as easy for everyone to pass as it is for you, you know,” he replied, neatly folding the sheets of paper in his hands and looking at Blaine expectantly.

“Ouch. Do we have anything for burns in that Narnia cabinet of yours?” Blaine asked, and Kurt chuckled, coming closer and shaking his head.

“Sterile bandages?” he quipped, and Blaine rolled his eyes.

“It’s not like I’m some alpha-male type,” he replied, tweaking the corners of his cream bow tie for emphasis.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that we’d be stupid not to take… Precautions,” Kurt clarified, eyes dropping to the front of Blaine’s fitted black button-down. “I like this shirt on you. I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”

“I got it in—in London,” Blaine said, and his stomach tightened as Kurt’s eyes clouded for a moment, a shadow of a frown whispering across his features before being swallowed by a tight smile. He wanted to make it stretch from ear to ear, make Kurt grin and laugh and be silly and free, like he used to on the first day of every summer break when they’d go to the Brunswick diner and split an ice cream sundae for breakfast, reliving all the best moments of another completed school year.

His tentative, newfound sense of bravado was suddenly gone, broken apart by the dawning of terrible light at just what he’d put Kurt through by not being there for him, by letting his emails go unanswered and calls unreturned. Considering that Kurt had applied for the same internship, at the time Blaine had told himself that it was probably better for Kurt not to be hearing about all of the amazing things he was doing and learning—conveniently forgetting, of course, that Kurt would have his own stories to tell.

He stepped forward and cupped Kurt’s face in his hands, watched as Kurt’s eyes slipped automatically closed like he knew exactly what was coming, and kissed him firmly on the mouth. It still made him feel like he was tilting sideways, the feeling of Kurt’s impossibly soft lips against his own, the way Kurt yielded and returned in equal measure, and for a moment he reveled in it.

“What was that for?” Kurt asked a little breathlessly when Blaine pulled back, dropping his hands to his sides.

“I just—wanted to kiss you.”

“Any particular reason?”

“That was Mom on the phone,” Blaine said after a pause. “She told me you used to go over for dinner sometimes, while I was away.”

Kurt’s features hardened, and he worked his jaw. Blaine’s stomach dropped; the last time he’d seen that look on Kurt’s face had been over Skype, when Blaine had told him he wasn’t coming home for Christmas.

_“Come on, Blaine. Plenty of students take Christmas off, even if it’s just a few days. Look at you! You’ve lost weight, you look like you’re barely sleeping—“_

_“Save it, Kurt; I’ve already had a lecture from Mom.”_

_“I’m not_ lecturing _you, Christ! I just, I—I was really looking forward to seeing you, and—“_

_“Kurt, I’m sorry. I have too much work to do here; I can’t just put extra hours in the day.“_

_“Then you know what? I don’t want to hear the words ‘I miss you’ from you ever again.”_

_“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”_

_“It means that every time you tell me you miss me, all I can think about is standing in front of you telling you that I_ missed _you. Past tense. If all there’s ever gonna be is missing you in present tense then I certainly don’t need to be reminded of it.”_

 _“You know what, Kurt? If this is how it’s gonna be, I’m fucking_ glad _I’m not coming home.”_

“What else did she say?” Kurt asked, his tone measured and so tightly controlled that Blaine knew it would be a mistake to say more. Instead, he took Kurt’s hand and tried to link their fingers, but Kurt gently pulled out of his grasp. “What else did she say, Blaine?”

“Nothing,” Blaine lied. “She just told me about the dinners. Kurt, I’m—“

“Let’s not talk about it,” Kurt interrupted, busying himself with scanning over their papers again.

“Kurt, come on, I—“

“No, Blaine!” Kurt exclaimed, rounding on him with fire in his eyes. Blaine took a half step back, hands raised. “Last year was one of the worst years of my life, and I don’t want to talk about it with _anyone,_ least of all _you.”_

“I think we _should_ talk about it,” Blaine said quietly.

“Why? Why, so I can tell you about all the nights I spent waiting by my phone for a call or an email that never came? So I can tell you about going over to your house and up to your room and listening to your favorite song like I was a fucking dog pining for its master? So I can tell you how much I hate myself because I can’t listen to you talking about London or your internship without hating _you_ a little bit, too?”

“You hate me?” Blaine whispered, eyes trained on that stupid flag pin because he couldn’t meet Kurt’s eyes, he couldn’t.

Kurt sighed heavily, his shoulders dropping. He wrapped his arms around his middle, and said, “No, B. Of course I don’t hate you. I just hate what that year did to me, what it turned me into.”

“Oh.”

“Look, let’s just… Let’s just go; we’re almost late for our slot. Okay?” Kurt asked, ducking into Blaine’s eye line with what looked like an attempt at a reassuring smile. He rubbed both hands up and down Blaine’s arms, and Blaine returned his smile as best he could while still feeling like he’d caused an irreparable rift in their friendship.

 _What if that’s what this is?_ he thought as he followed Kurt out of the R.V. _What if I caused this chasm between us and the only way for us to fill it isn’t with what we used to be, but with sex?_

_What if this breaks us both?_

Although he managed to remember to take plenty of pictures, the tour almost passed Blaine by completely. While Kurt looked fully engaged by the tour guide, following everything she said with the kind of rapt attention Blaine had only seen in their Golden Age of Hollywood lectures, the musty smell of the house was too close to how the hallway of his building in London had smelled, and try as he might, he couldn’t put any of it from his mind.

They progressed through the tour quickly, and Blaine barely took in the grand mirrored staircase in the foyer, the clean and crisp white living room with its fifteen-foot couch, the dark wood and light countertops of the kitchen, or the royal blue accents of the dining room. The billiard room, with its walls covered in pleated, patterned fabric only drew his full attention when it elicited a small gasp from Kurt and excited whisperings from the other members of their group. Upstairs in the jungle room, Kurt leaned over to murmur something to him about how Elvis would have hotel rooms remodeled to look more like home when he was on the road, and Blaine simply nodded, not trusting himself to open his mouth lest a litany of apologies fall out: they were far too little, and far too late.

He and Kurt had never apologized to one another. Rather than “I’m sorry,” it was Kurt driving to Yarmouth to get Blaine a loaf of his favorite sourdough from Rosemont Market to make up for the stale one in the bread box. Rather than “I’m sorry,” it was Blaine staying up all night with Kurt to help rewrite the report he’d accidentally deleted. Rather than “I’m sorry,” it was both of them arriving back at their dorm room at the same time, carrying DVDs and bottles of Cuervo and bursting into laughter that swept away any lingering vestiges of their disagreement about the cleaning schedule.

Once the tour was over, the glitz and shine of the vast array of awards in the racquetball building already fading from Blaine’s mind, the tour guide left the group in the Meditation Garden behind the main house, quietly paying their respects at the graves of Elvis and his closest family members.

He and Kurt made a slow circuit of the garden’s small pool, watching the clear blue water and listening to the steady splash of the fountains, and by the time they circled back around to stand at the foot of Elvis’ headstone, the rest of the group had moved off.

Kurt was standing next to him, arms crossed over his chest as he took in the smooth, dark stone and the tributes of flowers and flags and stuffed animals bordering it. As Blaine watched, he removed the flag pin from the front of his jacket and placed it on the corner of the marble before straightening up and letting out a quiet sigh.

Blaine glanced around surreptitiously, checking that no one was within immediate earshot, and buried his hands in his pockets. He rocked back and forth on his feet a little to the rhythm he was counting off in his mind, and when he started humming the first line of _[Always On My Mind](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/52297667020),_ it was barely audible even to his own ears— _maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should have, maybe I didn’t love you quite as often as I could have…_

As he settled into it, keeping his gaze trained on the water beyond the headstone, he grew a little louder. In his periphery, he saw Kurt freeze, and he wondered if he was thinking of all those times they’d apologized but not, those times they’d needed to but shown it instead of saying it.

At the chorus— _you were always on my mind, you were_ always _on my mind—_ he turned to look at Kurt, wavering a little at the expression in his eyes: shock, bewilderment and turmoil a storm of gray on blue. Pulling his right hand from his pocket, he reached out to brush his knuckles against Kurt’s hip.

“I was?” Kurt asked thickly.

“Of _course_ you were,” Blaine answered. And then, because he nevertheless needed to say it, “I’m so sorry.”

Kurt bit his lip and, faster than Blaine could register, threw his arms around Blaine’s neck, whispering into his skin, “Thank you.”

“I told you,” Blaine said quietly, wrapping his arms tightly around Kurt’s waist.

“Told me what?”

“That I’d sing you a love song if you wanted me to.”

Kurt sighed and shook his head, murmuring, “Don’t ruin it, B,” and all at once, Blaine was harshly reminded of their agreement.

_What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip._

Just then, he caught sight of a middle-aged man approaching the headstones and regarding their embrace through dangerously narrowed eyes. Reminded of exactly where they were and how careful they had to be, Blaine thought quickly. He gestured to the man in his arms and, with an exaggerated eye-roll, explained, “He’s a _big_ fan.”

The man quickly averted his gaze with an abrupt nod, and Kurt stepped back, seeming not to even need to see for himself to whom Blaine had been speaking. He cleared his throat and made a show of wiping at his dry eyes, biting his lip against the grin Blaine knew was threatening to break free. It made him feel lighter, somehow—like things were back to normal, like… Like he could do this.

“Come on,” Kurt murmured in a low voice, inclining his head towards the house.

“Gift shop?” Blaine asked knowingly, and Kurt nodded.

“I’m sure it’s all gold and sparkly, and so tacky-fabulous that we’ll spend hours there.”

Blaine chuckled, motioned for Kurt to lead the way, and said, “Let’s go.”

 

**Distance: 4,494 miles**

*

**Day 039: Thursday 25th October, 2012  
Philadelphia, Redux (Kentucky)**

_“What about_ Elizabethtown?”

_“Isn’t that supposed to be super depressing?”_

_“I think it’s actually pretty funny. That’s what the reviews said, anyway…”_

 

“Holy _hell,”_ Kurt panted, collapsing back against the pillows on his side of the bed. He let out a breathless laugh, the back of his hand drifting over the expanse of Blaine’s chest and keeping slow time with [the mellow Nouvelle Vague song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/53442379405) playing in the background. Up until five seconds ago, he hadn’t even remembered that music was playing. “If this were a movie, I’d be smoking a cigarette right now.”

Blaine hummed under his breath, eyes slipping closed as he said, “Don’t say anything. Just bask.”

Smiling lazily, Kurt let his gaze drift toward the ceiling and concentrated on getting his labored breathing under control. It felt like the only thing he could control anymore, but the curious thing was that it wasn’t bothering him as much as he would have expected.

The moment he’d decided to give himself over to Blaine in Memphis, standing at Elvis’ grave of all places, things had begun to fall into place. It was as if not just a single brick had become displaced from the intangible but undeniable wall between them—no, this time it was as if they had both taken a sledgehammer to the foundations of the entire construct, and were building something new, something the likes of which Kurt had never known. He had already noticed a shift in both their moods, and how free they had suddenly become with one another. _Like we used to be,_ he thought, _only now we’re more. And if we can’t be everything, at least we’re more._

They didn’t come close to speaking about the myriad intricacies of exactly what was happening between them, and Kurt found himself inwardly breathing a heavy sigh of relief every time Blaine looked at him as if he wanted to say something and then, at the last moment, thought better of it. If either of them were to put this under a microscope and examine it, everything would be ruined. He would be weighed, measured, and found wanting—and so, in turn, Blaine would no longer want him.

“I believe, Mr. Hummel, you promised to show me a good time tonight,” Blaine finally said, his words punctuated by the stretch of his arms up over his head, a motion which Kurt followed with tired eyes.

“Forgive me, Mr. Anderson, but if what just happened isn’t a good time,” Kurt began, shifting closer and capturing Blaine’s mouth in a firm kiss, “then I don’t know what is.”

“Come on, Kurt. You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Blaine said, eyes shining even in the dim evening light.

“Hmm… Nope, can’t say that I do,” Kurt replied, unable to hold back the grin creeping its way along the curve of his mouth.

“I have ways and means of making you talk, you know,” Blaine said slowly, and before Kurt had the chance to put up a fight, Blaine had rolled them over so that he was straddling Kurt’s thighs. The thin sheet covering them slipped away as Blaine leaned forward and took Kurt’s wrists in his hands, stretching his arms up above his head and holding them there. Their faces were mere inches apart, Blaine’s warm breath fanning over Kurt’s slightly parted lips, and Blaine simply stayed there.

When Kurt craned upwards to kiss him, Blaine pulled away, eyes still locked on Kurt’s. It stirred the puddle of fiery want in his belly again and he let out a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan.

“Okay, fine, you win,” he acquiesced, and when Blaine did nothing more than blink down at him, he wriggled a little in his grasp. “What, do you want it in writing?”

“No, I just didn’t think you’d cave so soon. I had a strategy,” Blaine said, and loosened his grip.

“Oh, a _strategy,”_ Kurt repeated, sitting up as Blaine climbed off him. “And what did this _strategy_ involve?”

“Mostly tickling you until you begged for mercy.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Blaine challenged, leveling him with a fervent look.

Kurt sighed, inwardly admitting defeat. He sat up and swung his legs off the mattress, bending down in search of his underwear, and asked, “So what kind of good time are you looking for?”

There was quiet for a moment, and then the mattress dipped behind him and he felt the skin of Blaine’s bare chest pressing against his back and strong arms wrapping around his shoulders. Blaine pressed a kiss just behind his ear, and announced, “You’re taking me dancing.”

“I am, huh?” Kurt asked, and leaned back into Blaine, letting his eyes slip closed for a brief moment.

“Yep. Bar Complex; it’s downtown,” Blaine said, and abruptly, the warmth of his body was gone as he clambered off the bed once again and walked around to the wardrobes. Kurt tilted his head and watched as Blaine pulled on a fresh pair of underwear, feeling oddly voyeuristic but not troubled by it as he would have been—and, admittedly, frequently was—at the beginning of their trip.

Blaine caught him looking, and shook his ass from side to side with a smirk. Kurt let out a bark of laughter and finally pulled himself together enough to join him, bumping Blaine’s hip with his own. Separating himself from Blaine by opening one of the mirrored doors to begin pulling outfit options, behind the safe barrier of wood and glass, he mouthed the words to the chorus of the song still playing quietly by their messy, rumpled bed.

_Oh, give me the words, give me the words that tell me nothing…_

 

By the time they got to The Bar, the dance floor had only just opened, but it was already heaving with people. Kurt immediately took Blaine by the hand and led him through the crowd, their pace matching the heavy, pulsing beat of the song that was playing. It was winding up as he found them a spot and turned to Blaine, hands slipping to his waist and pulling him close.

Just for a moment, Kurt let himself get lost in it; his eyes drifted closed and Blaine was pressed against him from chest to thigh. Just for a moment, everything slowed: the ghostly drag of Blaine’s fingertips along Kurt’s arms as he moved them to rest atop his shoulders; the rise and fall of Blaine’s chest against his, only thin layers of steel gray and blood red separating them; the sensation of something slotting into place as Blaine gripped his hips and brushed his lips over Kurt’s collarbone. Just for a moment, he let himself belong to Blaine completely.

He was grateful when the moment passed, the intensity of it close to overwhelming until he pulled himself together enough to shake his head and let himself focus on moving with Blaine to the beat of [the next song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/53442483954), one that he immediately recognized from his early teens. Judging by Blaine’s grin as he wrapped his arms around Kurt’s waist and rocked him from side to side in a parody of a slow dance at high school prom, he recognized it, too.

Feeling bold—certainly bolder than he had within the confines of the R.V., at least—Kurt pointed at Blaine and mouthed along with the last line of the chorus: _It just won’t do without you._

“Where have I heard this before?” Blaine asked, raising his voice over the music.

“David’s party, freshman year of high school,” Kurt said, close to his ear. “Remember when you were so excited that he invited you because you had that huge crush on him?”

“I didn’t—Kurt, I hadn’t even come out in freshman year!”

“Didn’t stop you from spending that entire party mooning at him from across his basement, though.”

“No, there’s no way that actually happened,” Blaine insisted, shaking his head. He spun Kurt to face out into the crush of bodies around them and pulled him back, one arm wrapped around his waist and the other around his chest. Momentarily, Kurt flashed on another club like this one, dancing with Blaine in front of a neon equalizer and words falling out of his mouth quicker than he could register. Bending his knees a little, he leaned back into Blaine and rested his head on his shoulder.

“You’re remembering it all wrong! You had that huge crush on him because he had, and I quote, ‘the _best_ smile.’”

“I didn’t have a crush on him, Kurt—I had a crush on _you.”_

Abruptly, Kurt turned in Blaine’s arms and stared him down, not believing him for a second. “That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be,” Blaine replied.

“You didn’t even know if I was gay!”

“What? Of course I did. Don’t you remember what I told you when you came out to me? That I’d known since I was thirteen and Burt let slip about the shoes?”

“But you—you learned guitar so you could take over Wes’ spot in the jazz band after he graduated! I thought it—wasn’t it just an excuse to spend more time with David?”

Blaine shook his head, his expression growing more serious by the second, and Kurt couldn’t hold his gaze any longer. The last line between them was still a fine one and he had to walk it carefully: instead of letting the overwhelm chase him away from Blaine and this uneven foundation of theirs, he consumed it, letting it run through him like a current. He dropped his eyes to the front of Blaine’s shirt, the pastel shades of flashing neon lights casting the crimson fabric in every color there was.

“I learned guitar because you wouldn’t stop talking about how awesome guitarists were. I thought you liked _Wes_ and I wanted to make you like me instead,” Blaine said, “and look how well that worked out. I _still_ lost out to Brandon Flowers and Adam Levine, those assholes.”

Like air rushing in to fill the void of a vacuum, the tension broke and Kurt burst into laughter, burying his face in Blaine’s shoulder to keep from doubling over.

“So what did this crush of yours involve?” he asked when he finally got ahold of himself.

“We were fourteen, Kurt,” Blaine said, rolling his eyes.

“So? Tell me.”

“Mainly, um…” Blaine trailed off, and Kurt looked at him expectantly. “Mainly taking you out for ice cream, holding hands with you… You know, all that cutesy teenage stuff.”

“Back when you were still wearing your Ninja Turtles shirts?” Kurt asked wryly.

“You know I’d still be wearing those if it wasn’t for your big intervention sophomore year,” Blaine said, grinning at the memory.

“Please, those shirts wouldn’t fit you now. Unless you were _trying_ to look like a rent boy, of course,” Kurt mused, running his hands over the breadth of Blaine’s shoulders and trying to find the skinny, awkward little teenage boy he remembered beneath the muscle and flesh. He was still there, somewhere, buried far below the bravado and façade, and while Kurt didn’t particularly miss being that young and confused all the time, he missed how simple things used to be between them.

Yet still he couldn’t refrain from taking this new thing, having it and keeping it and not thinking about the date stamp printed indelibly through them both, through every look and touch and kiss. It felt too much like something he’d been waiting to discover his entire life.

“What, you don’t like that look?” Blaine teased, eliciting a fresh round of giggles from Kurt.

“Well, I guess I could be persuaded,” he replied, trailing his hands down to Blaine’s waist and tugging on his belt loops. “God, look at us. Look at _you._ We grew up.”

“We did.”

“And now we have this.”

“And this,” Blaine began, punctuating with a firm, fleeting kiss, “is much better than ice cream.”

Wrapping his arms tightly around Blaine’s neck, Kurt returned the kiss almost forcefully, all open mouth and dipping tongue, his teeth nipping at Blaine’s bottom lip and leaving impressions of himself behind. The heat in the club was almost stifling and sweat was beading at his temples, but he pulled them deeper into the crowd. Later, when they were danced out and he’d let Blaine get him hard and drive him crazy with want, he’d take Blaine by the hand and lead him out of the club and back to the R.V. They’d shed layers of clothing and modesty alike, and from the first touch to the last second before Kurt succumbed to sleep, he would once again, for that brief time, let himself belong to Blaine completely.

And as one song faded into the next, beats seamlessly flowing together and the lights pulsing in time, bodies packed tight around them, Kurt reminded himself of what he’d been thinking earlier that very evening, lying spent in bed next to Blaine.

_If we can’t be everything, at least we’re more._

 

**Distance: 4,936 miles**


	5. Chapter 5

**Day 040: Friday 26th October, 2012  
Shelter (West Virginia)**

_“Okay… So we’ve got it narrowed down to_ The Deer Hunter _and_ Super 8?”

_“Yep. And you know I’m a sucker for the classics, so…”_

“The Deer Hunter, _then.”_

 

Blaine’s feet were resting on the dashboard, the passenger seat tipped as far back as it would go, and under his breath he was singing along to the relaxed and happy [BOY song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/53793692917) playing on the radio. The R.V. was parked at the Clark Pump-N-Shop in Huntington, and through the open driver’s side window, Blaine watched Kurt paying for something inside—hopefully the Fruit Roll-Ups he said he’d been inexplicably craving since waking up that morning.

If it wasn’t for his deep sense of relaxation, he might still have been fixated on his unintentional slip-up in the club. He’d never intended on Kurt finding out about his once-upon-a-time crush. Quite the contrary: he’d been embarrassed about it ever since, and now he felt like a teenager all over again. What they had wasn’t a romance, it wasn’t—love.

“It’s better,” Blaine said to himself, with a conviction he was still trying to get behind. _It’s better because this way we don’t owe each other anything after the trip. We get all this built-up tension out of our systems, and then we can go back to what we were, what we’ve always been._

The driver’s side door opened and Kurt climbed in, swinging himself into the seat with a plastic bag dangling from his fingers. He tossed a brightly-colored package into Blaine’s lap, and Blaine picked it up, regarding it curiously.

“Beef jerky?” Blaine said.

“So much beef jerky,” Kurt muttered, pushing his sunglasses up on top of his head. “There was almost an entire wall of it.”

“Did you get your Fruit Roll-Ups?” Blaine asked.

“No,” Kurt said, “but I did get Swedish Fish, so that kind of makes up for it.”

“Swedish Fish make up for _everything.”_

“And that’s why I got extra for you.”

“My hero,” Blaine simpered, earning himself a smile. A moment settled between them where they did nothing more than look at one another, comfortably and without expectation, and when Blaine had sunken into it, he finally flicked his eyes towards the radio and sang along, _“drive darling, drive darling, drive darling.”_

“Can _you_ drive, _darling?”_ Kurt quipped. Blaine nodded and pulled his seat upright, easily switching their places without either of them needing to step out of the vehicle. It was true that they were limited for space, but the R.V. still beat spending three and a half months in a car or an SUV.

It wasn’t long before Blaine was merging back onto the 64, absently tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Kurt briefly disappeared into the back of the R.V., and when he dropped into his seat again, he was carrying a thick journal. It was worn and weathered, the pastel green fabric cracked on the spine and wearing thin at the corners, and Kurt handled it with a reverent gentility.

“So I’ve been meaning to show this to you for a while,” he said. “And now probably isn’t the most opportune time, I know, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since this morning.”

“What is it?” Blaine asked.

“It’s Mom’s art journal,” Kurt said, turning it over in his hands. “Dad found it when he was cleaning out the attic just before he and Carole got married, and I guess he thought I should have it. He told me that whenever she was sad or stressed out or really happy, she would take out this book, sit in his chair and just draw for a while.”

Blaine smiled, imagining Elizabeth’s small frame an island of warmth and color against the brown leather of Burt’s chair, her pencil moving in swift strokes and scratching, scratching, scratching. It didn’t feel entirely like a borrowed memory. “What kind of stuff did she draw?”

“There’s flowers, our house, some abstract stuff… Everything, really. I got it out because ever since we went to see Nan, I’ve been thinking more about getting a tattoo, and I figured I could find some ideas in here, or get one of her drawings on me, or _something._ Anyway, I came across this one picture…” Kurt trailed off, flipping the book open at a page he’d marked with a small, torn strip of white paper. He leaned across the space between them, holding the book just next to the steering wheel and gesturing for Blaine to take it.

Eyes flicking between the time-yellowed pages of the book and the mostly clear road ahead, Blaine looked at the pencil drawing. It was a startling likeness of two little boys, sitting next to one another on a couch and sharing a plate of what looked like carrot sticks and apple slices. One had neatly combed hair and sat with his legs crossed, clutching a stuffed animal that looked like Barney the dinosaur, and the other had a mess of dark curls that fell about his forehead, legs dangling off the edge of the couch and one slightly raised, as if he was kicking his feet up and down. The boy with curly hair was gazing at the other with such a look of happiness and adulation that it made Blaine’s breath catch in his chest: it was them, aged six or seven. It was _him,_ looking at his best friend—a real best friend, just like he’d always wanted. The best friend he’d adored from the moment they’d met.

“Oh my god, this is—“

_“Blaine!”_

Blaine’s gaze shot upward just in time to see a deer running out onto the highway; instinctively, he wrenched the steering wheel to the right and slammed the brakes.

It wasn’t like the movies or the books: nothing went into slow motion—he only had time to react. They came to a dead stop on the shoulder, Blaine’s heart racing double time in his chest and his knuckles white.

“Shit. _Shit!”_ Kurt exclaimed from beside him. “What the hell were you thinking?! What was the _number one_ rule my dad taught us about deer?”

Blaine scrubbed a shaking hand over his face, the other flexing on the steering wheel as the engine idled. He swallowed against the acrid burn at the back of his throat and blinked up at the ceiling of the cab, willing back the sting. “Just give me a minute,” he managed to grind out between gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Kurt murmured. “God, it was _my_ fault. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Just… A minute.”

Slowly, Kurt reached across and unfurled Blaine’s fingers from the steering wheel, entwining them with his own instead. Blaine glanced over and saw Kurt’s other hand clutching tightly onto his Saint Christopher. They traded shaky smiles, and wordlessly switched places.

 

By the time they got to the Fox Fire Campground in Milton, dark and ominous rainclouds had swept away every last vestige of the cheerful sunlight that had been pouring into the R.V. all afternoon, and Blaine’s hands were still shaking. Kurt hadn’t said a word since they’d traded, and at first, Blaine had been grateful for a little silence in which to collect himself. But the longer it had stretched on, the more vivid his imagination had become, conjuring up multi-angle shots of wreckages and explosions and blood on the windshield.

The rain began to fall just as Kurt cut the engine, and Blaine let out a trembling sigh, the edge of his tension finally wearing away.

“Dad texted me to say that Governor LePage signed an emergency declaration,” Kurt said, referring to the tropical storm Blaine’s mother had told him about while they were on the way to Graceland. It had since been upgraded to a hurricane and given the name Sandy, and both his and Kurt’s families had been in regular contact, even though the authorities hadn’t been anticipating nearly as much damage as was being prepared for further down the east coast.

“They’re saying she’ll hit on Tuesday, right?” Blaine asked.

“Early on Tuesday, yes.”

Kurt climbed out of his seat and pulled Blaine up, leading him to the chair just behind the cab, which Blaine dropped into heavily. Kneeling next to him, Kurt reached up with both hands to cup Blaine’s face. For a moment neither of them moved a muscle, and then Kurt pulled Blaine down into a bruisingly tight embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again when he pulled back, his eyes a dark blue and clouded with anxiety.

Blaine shook his head. “I should have known better,” he replied, and then, “Will you please kiss me?”

The rain was pounding against the windshield, casting dappled and vacillating shadows across Kurt’s freckled skin, shadows that blurred together as he leaned up to close the gap between them and claim Blaine’s mouth with his own. Blaine clasped his hands behind Kurt’s head and pulled him impossibly closer, opening his mouth and tasting Kurt’s surprised hum.

Blaine never sat in the chair behind the cab, hating the feeling of the world coming at him sideways when he could barely deal with it head-on. But he could make an exception for Kurt, climbing up on top of him to straddle his lap, the heat building between them chasing away the persistent cold dread in his veins. Kurt was giving Blaine even more than he took, slowly thrusting his hips down and lavishing attention on his neck, fingertips digging into his shoulders. Music was playing from the dock in the cab, [a Ben Howard track](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/53793913908) from Blaine’s mellow playlist floating over to wrap him up in the easy sounds of a soft, steady guitar and an earthy, melodic voice singing of cold and winter and shelter. Everything was sensual and slow.

But Blaine didn’t want slow: what he wanted— _needed—_ was fast, yet lasting.

“Kurt,” he began, voice tailing into a moan as Kurt sucked hard over his pulse point; the sharp burst of aching under his skin spiked a twist at the base of his spine. “Kurt, fuck— _why_ don’t we have condoms?”

Kurt all but froze, and pulled away slowly. “It’s a little late for that,” he said flatly. “We’ve blown each other how many times at this point?”

Before he could stop to think, Blaine asked, “What if I want you to fuck me?”

“I’ve been fucking you all week,” Kurt said carefully.

“You know what I mean,” Blaine said, rolling his eyes even as a thought occurred to him, one that they’d somehow never, through all their years of friendship post-sexual awakening, explicitly discussed. “Don’t you top? Is that it?”

“No, I top. Exclusively, actually,” Kurt said, rubbing a hand over his face. “I was just… Surprised, is all.”

“Why?”

Kurt paused briefly before climbing out of the chair and retrieving the plastic bag from its place on the floor of the cab. He sheepishly pulled out a box of condoms and a small bottle of lube and silently held them out for Blaine’s inspection, the golden yellow glow of the R.V.’s interior lights picking out a faint pinkness high on his cheekbones. Blaine couldn’t help but let out a peal of laughter that settled warmly in his stomach.

He leaned over to take Kurt by the wrist and pull him back into his lap, hands rubbing over the denim wrapped around his thighs. “Give it up. You’re inside my head, aren’t you?”

Kurt ducked his head, grinning, and dropped the items into Blaine’s lap.

“What took you so long?” Blaine asked, rocking his hips up and eliciting a pleasant hiss from Kurt.

“Even after this past week, it’s still a big deal and I wanted it to be… I didn’t want it to mean nothing,” Kurt said quietly.

“It wouldn’t,” Blaine said reassuringly, cupping Kurt’s face and forcing his gaze upward. “It doesn’t.”

Kurt hummed, leaning in once more, but Blaine stopped him with just the tips of his fingers pressed to his chest. Voice firm and strong, he said simply, “I want you to fuck me.”

 _“Fuck,_ okay. Okay,” Kurt whispered, and surged forward to catch Blaine’s lips in a deep, plunging kiss.

They shed their clothes even more quickly than usual, only ever losing contact for a couple of seconds at any one time, and Kurt’s hands were everywhere, like he was trying to climb inside Blaine’s body and take up residence there. It was Kurt like Blaine had never experienced him before, silently frantic and communicating only through breath and touch.

Somehow, in the process of climbing out of the chair to rid Blaine of his jeans and underwear, Kurt stumbled and pulled them down onto the floor, Blaine on top of him and breathing heavily.

“So graceful,” Kurt muttered with an almost nervous giggle, and Blaine grinned. “Probably a sign we should take this to the bedroom.”

Blaine shook his head, eyes locked on Kurt’s as he rocked down, biting his lip against a groan—the drag of his cock along Kurt’s was imperfect friction, and so far from enough. “Fuck me right here.”

“Jesus, Blaine.”

Kurt hooked his leg around Blaine’s waist and flipped them over, making fast work of reaching up to the chair to grab the cushion and sliding it, still warm, beneath Blaine’s hips.

And then there was a single, endless moment where Blaine looked up at Kurt, took stock of being spread out beneath him, waiting and wanting. Lyrics carried over to him as if on a summer breeze: _And maybe, just maybe I’ll come home. Who am I, darling to you, who am I?_ He felt pasts and futures colliding, annihilating until there was only this, and it should have felt like a loss or a tragedy but instead it really did feel like… Coming home.

There was no turning back, and even if given the option, Blaine wouldn’t have faltered. Kurt kissed him while snaking long, slicked fingers inside him, slowly coaxing Blaine open with whispers of encouragement breathed between his slack lips.

It was so different from how he remembered it. While not actively trying to compare Kurt with Tyler, there was no real way around it when Kurt was shattering his expectations so completely. With Tyler it had been messy, fumbled, and rushed almost to the knife-edge fine line between pleasure and pain. There were no reassuring words or careful motions then—Tyler hadn’t been expecting a virgin, after all, and Blaine hadn’t told him until afterwards—and he was a muddled, half-forgotten shade in comparison to this.

“Okay?” Kurt asked as he finally drew his fingers out and away, and Blaine whined low in the back of his throat at the sudden sensation of emptiness. He shifted, scooting his hips forward and up, and watched as Kurt leaned away to tear open a condom and roll it on, his cock flushed and ready. Wordlessly, Kurt wound his damp fingers behind Blaine’s knee and lifted his leg to rest on his shoulder, pressing a single, softly smiling kiss to the skin of his ankle.

Blaine took a deep breath and forced away the straining that coursed through his veins, the clamoring for more, and nodded once.

Kurt began to push into him, and Blaine closed his eyes, focusing on the blunt, full pressure of Kurt sinking further and further inside him in one long, smooth motion until Kurt’s mouth was close enough for Blaine to lick his way into.

“Okay?” Kurt asked again, eyes glassy and pupils blown.

“You’re being very sweet,” Blaine said, “but I really just need you to fuck me now. Don’t hold back.”

Kurt paused, a quirk at the corners of his mouth and a challenge in his darkened eyes, and said, “You asked for it.”

And with that, Kurt pulled almost all of the way out and drove quickly back in, his hips slamming into Blaine with a slap of skin on skin. The fullness was exquisite, enough to have him arching his back and scrabbling for purchase where there was none to be found. When Kurt curled his arm around Blaine’s thigh and took his dick in hand, stroking him hard again, a litany of half-formed words began to fall from his mouth, eyes screwed shut as Kurt fucked into him over and over and over.

 _“Blaine,”_ Kurt breathed, and hearing his own name was suddenly too much, the vowels of it stretched taut around them both, and Kurt—Kurt was some fire spirit made of heat cells that cracked and broke Blaine apart until he was reduced to nothing but this, this writhing and dizzy mess on the floor of his R.V., every muscle drawn up and waiting on the brink.

“All week, ever since—fuck, I’ve wanted this all week…” he managed, forcing his eyes open because he had to see, to watch, to catalog this glorious and all-too-fleeting moment.

His heart was hammering in his chest and he could barely breathe, every time Kurt moaned and filled him up again leaving him as winded as if he’d just finished a sprint. Blaine was chasing his release, gaining ground with every twist of Kurt’s hand on the upstroke, and he’d _never_ felt this wanted.

“Just… Just a little—little more,” he panted, pleading like Kurt would deny him—but he didn’t, his pace quickening and hair damp at his temples.

Blaine came with a broken-off jumble of a sound, spilling warm and sticky over Kurt’s fingers, and Kurt followed not two seconds later with his teeth biting almost too hard into the flesh of Blaine’s calf, shuddering and trembling as he sank, settling to meet Blaine at the bottom.

When Kurt carefully pulled out, Blaine closed his eyes and tried not to feel the loss too keenly, blindly pulling Kurt to his chest.

“Was it worth the wait?” Kurt asked untold minutes later, voice cutting through the haze of Blaine’s sated drifting.

“I think this is what they mean when they say ‘blissed out’,” Blaine replied.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get any driving done from now on,” Kurt said, head bobbing on Blaine’s chest as he shook with silent laughter.

“Right? I mean… _God,”_ he said, pressing a lazy kiss to Kurt’s damp hairline and holding him close like he was something precious.

“Not quite, but close enough,” Kurt said. “We should probably move.”

“Or not,” Blaine breathed, eyes drifting closed and limbs heavy. There would be time to move, clean up, and lead each other to bed later: for now, he just wanted to be.

After a moment, he felt Kurt curling closer, lips brushing a kiss over his nipple as an arm wound loosely around his waist.

Rain was still pounding dully on the roof of the R.V., and Kurt’s contented sigh was only just audible. The last thing Blaine heard before falling asleep, a light tone of surprise belying Kurt’s words, was, “It means something with you.”

 

**Distance: 5,116 miles**

*

**Day 043: Monday 29th October, 2012  
Runaway Train (Ohio)**

_“Speaking of classics, you probably already know what I’m thinking…”_

_“Mmhmm._ Shawshank, _right?”_

“Shawshank.”

 

In quick succession, Kurt had gone from trying to nap in the bedroom, to sitting in the passenger seat with his feet tapping restlessly, to being stretched out on the couch with an arm thrown over his eyes, ear buds pumping The National’s [_Bloodbuzz Ohio_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/54538140008) into his ears with his phone—set to vibrate—clutched against his chest.

He had been trying to reach his dad for over an hour already, wanting one last chance to check in before Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast, but without fail, he’d received only a busy signal in response every time he’d called.

His phone finally buzzed to life in his hand, and Kurt leapt to his feet, all but tearing his ear buds from his ears and burying one hand in his hair as he answered the call.

“Dad?” he asked frantically.

“Hey, kiddo,” Burt said, his voice sounding crackly and far away. “You doin’ okay?”

Kurt let out a breath, belatedly noticing that he had begun to pace the length of the kitchen. “I’m fine, we—we’re both fine. What’s going on back there?”

“Nothin’ much,” Burt said. “A lotta people are stayin’ home tomorrow and they’ve pulled all the boats in, so it looks like people are just gonna hunker down and wait for it to pass.”

“It isn’t supposed to hit us too badly, right?” Kurt asked, leaning heavily against one of the kitchen countertops.

“Kiddo, you d— to worry. We’re gon— fine,” Burt said, his voice crackling in and out of silence, and Kurt stood straight.

“Dad?”

“—arry on havin’ fun— check in ag— over—”

The line went dead, and Kurt pulled the phone away from his ear to see that the call had been disconnected. “Fuck,” he whispered, his legs suddenly feeling unsteady. As deliberately as he could, he pressed his back against the lower cupboards and slid slowly to the floor, drawing his knees up to his chest and burying his face in his arms.

Everything was quickening, momentum building around him and carrying him along as if he were in the eye of a storm, the middle car of a runaway train. The most unsettling part, however, was not the sensation itself—it was that he didn’t know where he was going. All at once, he wished he was back in Maine, sitting on the couch with Carole opposite Burt in his ancient chair and laughing hysterically as they all tried to come up with the most outrageously incorrect answers to questions on _Jeopardy._

 _Everything used to be so much simpler,_ he thought. An abrupt and unanticipated rush of nostalgia swept over him, and he imagined the sound of a videotape rewinding, the machine churning into high gear after ten seconds or so; the click of jewel cases against one another as he thumbed through CDs at Studio 48; the beeping and scraping of a dial-up modem.

Kurt felt the R.V. shuddering to a halt underneath him, and he raised his head an infinitesimal amount as he heard soft footsteps coming closer. Blaine crouched in front of him, warm fingers wrapping around Kurt’s wrist, and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” Kurt answered dully. “I just tried to talk to my dad and the phone cut out; I still have that fucking crick in my neck from sleeping on the floor the other night, and everything was better in the nineties.”

“Alright, come on, get up,” Blaine commanded softly, pulling Kurt to his feet. Without preamble, Blaine led him to the cab, gently pushing him down into the passenger seat, and started the engine again.

“Where are we?” Kurt asked.

“Taking a little detour,” Blaine said, offering nothing more, and Kurt didn’t have the energy to probe any further. “So why was everything better in the nineties?”

“Did you ever play Spyro the Dragon?” Kurt asked after a moment’s consideration.

“Nah, don’t you remember? I was always a Crash Bandicoot guy.”

“Really?”

“Come on, Kurt. You really don’t remember? I’m the undefeated CTR champion.”

“Right, I remember. And you’re only undefeated because you used cheats all the time,” Kurt grumbled, and Blaine waved him off with a dismissive hand.

“Look at how much we have now compared to the nineties,” he said. “High-speed internet, iPods, cell phones, DVDs—“

“No, those can’t be separate things. Those all come under the category of technology,” Kurt interrupted heatedly. “And anyway, videotapes were _so_ much better. At least they didn’t wake you up with the menus if you fell asleep watching them.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that,” Blaine conceded, and Kurt sat back with a satisfied grin. “But what about, um… Hmm.”

“Exactly. I defy you to name me one thing that wasn’t great about the nineties.”

A beat passed, and then Blaine announced triumphantly, “Scrunchies.”

“Something pertinent to _us,_ B.”

“Lack of equal rights.”

“Point. What else?”

“Not being able to use the internet when someone was on the phone.”

“And what about the Goosebumps books?” Kurt countered, dredging up memories he’d long thought forgotten. _“Space Jam?_ The Backstreet Boys? _Fresh Prince?_ Corey and Topanga?”

“Okay, okay, oh my _God,”_ Blaine exclaimed, laughter running through his words. “I get it. The nineties were awesome. You win, Twentieth Century Boy.”

“Thank you,” Kurt said, gratified. Sitting back in his seat, he took out his phone and almost without conscious thought pulled up the latest news and weather reports. He could feel the tension seeping back into his body and his eyebrows knitting together but seemed unable to stop himself from scrolling through news report after news report.

“Couldn’t have done that in the nineties,” Blaine muttered, but Kurt ignored him. With a reproachful glance, Blaine continued, “You’re going to drive yourself crazy, you know. Look, let’s stop for coffee. We’re out of beans anyway so we can pick up some more if they’re good, and we’ll just get out of the R.V. for a little bit and decompress. Okay?”

“Sounds good,” Kurt said offhandedly, adding, “Anywhere but Starbucks.”

“Don’t worry; I’ve got it covered,” Blaine replied, his tone holding a little too much meaning, and it was then that Kurt looked out through the windshield to find that Blaine was turning into a large parking lot opposite a long strip of stores.

“Is this the detour you were talking about?” Kurt asked. When Blaine nodded, he continued, “Where are we?”

“Lima, Ohio. And we’re about to get coffee at _The Lima Bean,”_ Blaine told him with all the excitement of a small child at Christmas as he put the R.V. in park and cut the engine.

“What is it with you and puns?” Kurt grumbled, but climbed out of the cab all the same.

The coffee shop’s interior was bright and airy, with light walls and simple, mahogany tables. It felt welcoming and homey, carrying a cozy atmosphere while still being spacious. Kurt watched Blaine cast a cheerful and appraising eye around the place, and knew that he’d come to the same conclusion: this place was most definitely a good stopping point.

He drew out his wallet and handed Blaine a wrinkled ten dollar bill, cutting off his protests and telling him to get their drinks while he went to use the restroom. “It’ll be nice to use one that I don’t have to clean myself,” he quipped as he turned on his heel.

There was soft music playing inside The Lima Bean; instead of the generic muzak he’d come to expect from coffee shops, it was smooth and easy listening. As he was washing his hands, he recognized the opening bars of [_Push & Pull_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/54538321396) by Nikka Costa, a song he’d instantly loved upon first hearing it play over the closing credits of _Blow._

Alone in the restroom and feeling like every movie cliché ever, Kurt regarded himself in the mirror with his hands braced on either side of the sink. There was something tugging him out of the bathroom, that same runaway train sensation he’d been experiencing all day, and he suddenly ached to hum along with the song’s lyrics.

Resisting the urge to open his mouth and sing was a thing at which Kurt had become practiced. It started with hearing a song he liked, and progressed through taking note of the beat and rhythm, the little nuances and changes in pattern. The singer might have hummed or vocalized a little. When the singing began, there was always a tightness at the back of Kurt’s throat, like the potential in the bud of a flower ready to bloom. His lips may have parted a little, but no sound ever came out—not outside the confines of his room in an otherwise empty house, at least.

Until now.

He dropped his gaze to the gleaming white porcelain of the sink, and without preface or preamble, he was humming: shakily at first, but growing stronger with each note change. He hummed all the way through the first verse and chorus, buoyed up further and further, soaring, _flying_ over the notes and into the second verse, paying no attention to the lyrics or any deeper meaning because this, _this_ was what he had been building toward. This was where his glorious runaway train had been taking him.

Smiling at himself in the mirror like a fool, he left the restroom with a new spring in his step. As he rounded the corner that led back into the coffee shop proper, the second chorus almost at its end, he saw Blaine taking their coffees from the counter. There was a stirrer poking out of the side of his mouth, packets of sugar woven between his fingers, and it was just as the song’s true beat began that he noticed Kurt and grinned sheepishly.

_I love you._

All at once, Kurt’s voice locked up in his throat and he could no longer hear anything. The runaway train had been hurtling at a constant break-neck speed, coming now to a screeching halt before him, only Kurt wasn’t a passenger—his feet were tied to the tracks, and the train had stopped mere inches from his face. The moment hung, suspended in stasis with only disturbed dust motes floating around him, and it took everything Kurt had not to reel back.

He shook his head to try and clear the ringing in his ears, shakily making his way towards Blaine like a foal on new legs.

New legs, but old eyes that saw clearly for the very first time—he was in love with Blaine.

“Did I hear someone humming just now?” Blaine asked knowingly when Kurt all but fell into the seat opposite.

He bit his lip and shrugged, lacking the self-trust not to simply prostrate himself at Blaine’s feet and make declarations and promises he could never possibly keep, and Blaine chuckled with a shake of his head.

Kurt trained his gaze on the tabletop, because if he even so much as looked Blaine in the eye, Blaine would know, he was sure of it. He would know, and all of what was good and right between them would be dashed, if it wasn’t already; it would all come crashing down around Kurt’s ears and he’d be left without Blaine, without his heart, without anything.

He reached for his coffee, the blend of rich chocolate and bitter French roast rising before him in a thin coil of steam, and he closed his eyes just for a moment, wishing with all his heart that he could go back to being blind, to not seeing. To being young and unwise with nothing that he could stand to cataclysmically ruin—because they were caught in each other’s history; they _were_ each other’s history… But they weren’t—couldn’t possibly be—each other’s future.

He took a sip from his thick paper cup, hissing when the scalding liquid burned his tongue. Blaine winced at him in sympathy, and then slid his hand across the top of the table just like he had done in Provincetown.

This time, Kurt didn’t refuse; on the contrary, he held on for dear life.

 

**Distance: 5,391 miles**

*

**Day 045: Wednesday 31st October, 2013  
The Reclamation Project (Michigan)**

_“So what you’re really saying is I have to choose between Beyoncé and George Clooney?”_

_“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”_

_“…Fine._ Dreamgirls.”

 

His spirits high, Blaine looked over his outfit in the mirror, turning this way and that. He was wearing tight black jeans that hugged his ass and thighs, a simple, fitted black tank, and the oversized, fine red feather jacket Kurt had made specifically for him. In the hopes of achieving a ‘devil may care’ look, he had outlined his eyes in smudgy black eyeliner and styled his curls a little messier than usual. As he glanced at himself one last time, he decided that he’d met his self-imposed objective. He looked good, and he felt ready to get up on stage and rock the house.

Blaine was calling it ‘The Reclamation Project:’ They would go to The Alley Bar in Ann Arbor, where Hugh and April’s open-mic live karaoke outfit was playing, and somehow, Blaine would get Kurt up on the stage to sing. He was banking on the fact that Kurt had never before backed down from a challenge and hoping against hope that he wouldn’t break his streak, even with something as contentious as Kurt’s singing.

His plan had been forming ever since he’d caught Kurt mouthing the words to a song as they got ready for their night out in Lexington. It had solidified even further when he’d heard Kurt humming in The Lima Bean upon his return from the restroom, and Blaine had almost gone under as a wave of fondness and excitement crashed over him. It was then, following a brief text exchange with Hugh, that his plan had become iron-clad.

And then Kurt stalked out of the bathroom looking every inch the glam rock star: a plain white tank, skinny leather pants and a leather jacket with studded shoulders. He’d completed the look with a bright pink star framing his left eye, and had somehow worked pink and blond streaks into the front of his hair.

Blaine felt as if he’d had the air punched out of him, and all other thoughts were driven from his mind entirely.

“What?” Kurt asked flatly upon catching him staring.

“Happy Halloween, indeed,” Blaine said, with an aborted gesture towards Kurt’s outfit. “I see what you mean, now. About the pants paying for themselves.”

“Best three hundred dollars I ever spent,” Kurt quipped, sashaying his hips as he moved closer. He tugged gently on the shoulders of Blaine’s jacket, smoothed his palms down the front, and asked, “This still fit okay?”

“Perfect. It’s perfect,” Blaine breathed, taken by how the pink make-up had managed to bring out a startling blue clarity in Kurt’s eyes.

“If only we didn’t have somewhere to be…” Kurt trailed off, scanning Blaine’s body from head to toe and shaking his head.

Since hearing from both of their families earlier that evening, he and Kurt had been in considerably brighter moods than the past two days. Hurricane Sandy had been and gone. No major damage had been sustained at either family home back in Maine, and Blaine had received a text from his dad just before dinner to report that he and Alison were safe and well, having gone to their cabin at Saint Mary Lake at the last minute. They could finally let loose and breathe again.

“Well,” Blaine began, ducking his head and looking up at Kurt from underneath his eyelashes, “we’ve still got fifteen minutes.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow, eyes landing on Blaine’s mouth. “Excellent,” he murmured, and pushed Blaine backwards into the bedroom, kicking the door shut behind them.

 

Twenty-five minutes later, as Blaine’s phone buzzed angrily in his pocket, they walked into the bar. It looked to be packed almost to capacity, people crowding around tables decorated with black candles and along walls strung with cotton spider webs. Not a single person was dressed in civilian clothes; as Blaine briefly scanned the crowd, he counted four zombies, a sandman, three mummies, Starsky and Hutch, Daisy Duke, a banana, five witches in various stages of undress, and the eleventh Doctor—complete with bow tie _and_ fez. The atmosphere was thrumming with the low undercurrent of a thrill that Blaine could attribute only to Halloween parties, something caught between loud fun and quiet fear, despite knowing better.

“Elmo!” came a croaky voice to his right, and Blaine grimaced.

“Hey, Flower,” he greeted April, turning at the same moment Kurt did.

“I’ve missed you guys so much!” she exclaimed, and let out a peal of laughter as Kurt grabbed her around the waist, picked her up and spun her around. Blaine felt a rush of excitement—at the very least, Kurt’s good mood was promising.

 _“What_ is up with your voice?” Kurt asked her without preamble, and April rolled her eyes.

“I have fucking laryngitis, so I can’t sing,” she grumbled, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “That’s why we’re so happy you came tonight, because we were wondering—“

“Oh, no,” Kurt interrupted, hands raised. “No, you _know_ I don’t sing.”

“Actually, we were hoping that Blaine would open for us,” April said, turning toward him and shooting him an imploring look. “Remember the show at The Cannery when Will’s grandma was in the hospital, and we did _Let Me Entertain You?”_

Blaine nodded, smiling at the memory of the show. He’d had a blast performing with them, even more so than The Spinning Cogs, and he couldn’t wait to get up on stage with them again.

“Of course I’ll open for you,” Blaine said. April grinned, and the stark white bones of her skintight skeleton costume stretched as she stood on tip toe to press a dry kiss to his cheek.

“Are you guys drinking?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the bar.

“Yeah, we just parked right behind the place,” Kurt said, lazily waving his hand for Blaine to take as he followed her.

“Then the first round’s on me. You’re seriously saving my ass,” April said earnestly, folding a twenty dollar bill between her first two fingers and holding it out over the bar. One of the bartenders—dressed all in red with a plastic pair of devil horns sitting atop his spiky brown hair—was by her side in an instant, and she ordered three tequila shots.

“So where are the guys?” Blaine asked as their shots were being lined up in front of them.

April rolled her eyes again, and said, “Probably all smoking in the courtyard. I had to come inside just to get a moment of peace. Can you believe that?”

“What’s up?” Kurt asked.

“Oh my _god,_ it’s just… I love these guys, you know I do. But spending every goddamn day with them in a freaking bus is…” April trailed off, shaking her head. Attention wandering to the full shot now sitting before her, she raised it to them and downed it in one without so much as a pull at the corners of her mouth, Blaine and Kurt both following suit. “I mean, Will had to go home because of his grandma, and—okay, take today for example. Hugh has been on my ass about taking my fucking medication, which, I’ve been on birth control since I was fucking fifteen, okay? I know how to take a goddamn pill. Liam’s barely spoken to Dan all week since he made some sort of joke about Green Day… I don’t even know. Drake’s constantly pranking the both of them, and it’s escalated to the point where he’s trying to recruit the rest of us, and Marcie’s been freaking out all day long because the guys are trying to get her to sing tonight.”

Blaine let out a low whistle and signaled the bartender for another round of shots, watching Kurt’s face twist in sympathy.

“Just, I know you guys have your magical rainbow connection or whatever, but _seriously._ How do you stand it?” April asked, eyes flicking between them.

Kurt shot him a questioning look, and Blaine shrugged a little—they hadn’t exactly discussed whether they were going to tell anyone about what they were doing behind closed doors, and though he’d spilled the beans to his mom, telling one of their friends was an altogether different matter.

Their look must have lasted a fraction too long, however, because April stepped closer to them with her eyes wide and scanning their faces. A slow and satisfied Cheshire cat grin blossomed across her face, and as she leaned back against the bar, she asked, “How long?”

“It, um… Depends,” Blaine said, looking to Kurt for guidance.

“It happened in Philadelphia, and then again in Key West,” Kurt said succinctly, “and practically every night since then.”

April crossed her arms over her chest, announcing, “Well firstly, there is no fucking way I’m having sex with _any_ of them. And secondly, Kurt Hummel, since when am I not the first person you text when you add a new ass to the pile?”

“Oh, maybe since the invention of your told-you-so dance?” Kurt shot back.

“Wait,” Blaine intoned, turning to April. “You said this would happen?”

“July fourth. You guys have that whole Joey and Dawson thing going on… Always have,” April said.

Before Blaine had a chance to dwell too long on her words—or the way Kurt ducked his head and avoided his gaze—April checked her watch and nodded towards the end of the bar where the band’s equipment was set up on a small stage. “Come on, time for us to do our thing.”

Just before Blaine was dragged away, Kurt’s fingers coiled around the back of his neck and pulled him close for a bruising kiss. He captured Blaine’s bottom lip between his teeth and pulled off slowly, then whispered into his mouth, “Break a leg, rock star.”

With a bitten-off groan, Blaine left Kurt at the bar and followed April through the crowd. The rest of the band was filing in from the courtyard and each of them greeted him with hugs and smiles as they rushed to take their places on stage—this was how it always was with The One With The Band, and Blaine had long since grown used to their last-minute ways.

Once all the members of the band were in place, the lights dimmed and the noise in the bar died down as all heads turned towards them. Blaine found Kurt’s face at the back of the crowd just as Daniel sank into his stage stance at his keyboard, legs spread and knees bent, and began playing the introduction to [their opening song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/54538394711).

“Ladies and gentlemen, zombies and ghouls,” he spoke over the synthesized piano, spreading his arms wide, “we are The One With The Band, and we’re thrilled to be here in Ann Arbor!

“We’re a live, open-mic karaoke band, and we’ll be opening and closing the show for you. You’ll find copies of the song list around the bar, and we’d love for you to come rock out with us. So don’t be shy about putting your name down—just hand your slips to either myself or Mystique here,” Blaine continued, gesturing to his right where Marcie stood ready at her own microphone, her trumpet by her side. “For now just sit back, relax, and let us entertain you.”

The crowd applauded politely, some cheering and raising their glasses as Liam strummed his electric guitar and brought a new edge to the music.

Locking eyes with Kurt, who was slowly pushing his way through to the front of the crowd, Blaine began to sing.

 _“Hell is gone and Heaven’s here; there’s nothing left for you to fear. Shake your ass, come over here, now scream,”_ he sang, one hand curled around the mic and lips brushing it with every word. _“I’m a burning effigy of everything I used to be; you’re my rock of empathy, my dear._

 _“So come on, let me entertain you.”_ Blaine’s voice soared over the music, the lights bursting into life and Hugh joining in on the drums. It was then that the true rush began, his pulse quickening. He grinned across at Marcie as she provided the backing vocals, and winked at her encouragingly—she was already doing fantastically.

Kurt was at the front of the crowd, standing next to April and close enough to touch—instead, Blaine spread his arms wide again and circled his hips, making love to the song and the crowd throughout the second verse and chorus. Performing came to him like breathing, and whenever he found himself up on stage, it was almost like he morphed into the best possible version of himself: free, and unencumbered, and purely in the moment. The only other time he experienced anything similar was when he was directing, watching the action come together right before his eyes and knowing that he was witnessing creation.

The audience were all jumping by the time Blaine was singing the final refrain, feet spread and beckoning them closer with a repetition of, _“come on, come on, come on, come on.”_ He circled around behind Marcie and nudged her towards center stage for her trumpet solo, clapping his hands over his head as she brought the house down and the song to its end.

Applause erupted, and after taking a brief bow, Blaine randomly picked a slip from the handful he’d been handed by members of the crowd during the latter half of the song, and passed the rest to Marcie. “Okay,” he said, panting heavily, “the first brave soul we’re welcoming to the stage this evening is Mark, and he’ll be giving us his take on ACDC’s _Thunderstruck!”_

Blaine was practically carried through the crowd after he handed the mic over, Kurt and April flanking him all the way to the bar, where he drank deeply from the bottle of water shoved into his hands and took pause to throw an arm around Kurt’s neck and kiss him firmly on the mouth.

“How was I?” he asked, voice raised over the none-too-shabby singing.

Kurt’s eyes glittered under the bar lights, and his smile was just as bright as he replied, “You were wonderful.”

“Seriously, Blaine. Pure sex,” April agreed, nodding furiously. “If you weren’t gay, I’d tell you to watch out.”

Blaine laughed, and they settled onto stools at the bar to take in the evening. He probably wouldn’t be singing again until the time came to close the show, and he had at least two hours to convince Kurt to get up on stage and sing. Now was the time to sit back, catch his breath, and continue nudging.

After five more songs, including a truly awful version of _Sweet Caroline_ that had Kurt grimacing, Blaine wincing, and April lamenting the fact that she couldn’t magically turn her water into wine, Marcie stepped down from the stage to take a break. She approached them almost shyly, keeping her eyes trained downward; when she reached them, Blaine pulled her tiny frame close.

“What can I get you?” he asked her, trying to catch the bartender’s attention.

“Oh, um… I’m good, thanks, I have water up on stage,” she said, glancing up at him from under her thick bangs where they fell in front of her eyes. “Did I do okay?”

“Are you kidding?” Kurt interjected incredulously. “You were fantastic! And not just your trumpet solo—which, by the way, was _incredible—_ but your voice is great, too!”

“Really?” Marcie asked, twisting her fingers together. “Because I’ve been thinking that maybe I could sing, like, a whole song. By myself.”

“Do it. Oh my _god,_ you have to do it,” Kurt urged her.

“Is it that song I’ve heard you practicing with the guys? Is that why they wanted you to sing?” April asked, and when Marcie nodded hesitantly, she added, “Then I agree. Get up there and tell Hugh.”

“I just… It’s _terrifying!”_ Marcie exclaimed, though her voice barely rose. “It’s like holding out your bleeding heart in your hands and asking the audience not to laugh at you.”

“Sweetheart, if you bring even a fraction of what you brought to the song we opened with, you’ll blow everyone away,” Blaine assured her, squeezing her shoulders until she grinned up at him and nodded.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” she said decidedly. “Although… April, will you come up on stage with me? Like, not to sing, obviously—I’d just feel better if you were there.”

“Of course I will,” April said, looping her arm through Marcie’s. “Come on, let’s go tell the guys.”

Rather than watching the girls weave their way back toward the stage, Blaine watched Kurt. His eyes followed Marcie with a look so wistful, so lost, that it made Blaine’s stomach churn—for the first time, he wondered if he was doing the right thing, if he should just let it drop. He didn’t have to push Kurt, especially not when he’d already been making so much progress on his own… But there was an itch under his skin, an almost primal need to hear Kurt sing, that he couldn’t help but bump Kurt’s hip with his own when Marcie took her place front and center and Hugh counted them in.

“I bet you the next three tank dumps that you could never get up on stage and do what she’s doing,” he said carefully, head inclined toward Kurt but eyes fixed on Marcie as she slipped out of her own skin and into that of a performer, almost as if she was becoming the costume she wore.

“I bet you the next three tank dumps, plus a week’s worth of dinners, that I could,” Kurt replied, his tone holding only the merest edge of a challenge.

“Prove it,” Blaine countered.

“What?” Kurt asked incredulously, turning to face him and shaking his head. “No, I—you know I can’t sing.”

“It’s not that you _can't_ sing; it’s that you _won’t,”_ Blaine said, and pointed to Marcie. “Five minutes ago she was shaking, and look at her now.”

The song was [a bouncy Ella Riot track](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/54538464414) with a synthesized eighties vibe; Marcie was bouncing with it as she sang her way into the chorus: _“It could be so easy if you could feel what I feel now. Could it be you and me? I’m doing fine in the meantime.”_

 _Focus,_ Blaine thought, forcing himself not to get too caught up in the lyrics; instead, he snaked an arm around Kurt’s waist and leaned up to speak right into Kurt’s ear. “Come on, let me pick a song for you,” he said cajolingly, singing along with Marcie, _“It could be so easy.”_

“Why are you pushing this?” Kurt asked, sounding more tired than defensive.

“Because ever since we’ve left Maine, it’s like I’ve been watching you wake up again,” Blaine said. “Because we both know that you’ll feel better if you do it. Because I think you _want_ me to push you.”

Slowly and deliberately, Kurt raised his bottle to his lips and took a long drink, his eyes fixed on Marcie as she danced and spun and jumped across the stage; Blaine waited him out, breath held.

“Sometimes I really hate that you know me so well,” Kurt finally said, leaning into him. “I… Okay. What song did you have in mind?”

 _“Payphone_ by Maroon 5,” Blaine said on an exhale, barely able to believe that his plan had worked.

Kurt nodded once, promptly downed what remained in his bottle, and walked off in the direction of the restroom, leaving Blaine excited and confused by turns. Thinking better of following him for the moment, he grabbed one of the band’s slips from the bar and scribbled down Kurt’s name and the song, and went up to the stage to hand it to April.

Her eyes went wide as she read it, and she gaped openly at him; he simply shrugged in response and headed to the restroom.

Kurt was washing his hands at one of the sinks, the sleeves of his jacket rolled to the elbow. He was obviously stalling for time, and Blaine suddenly wished he’d thought to bring him a shot of something.

“I stopped singing,” Kurt said quietly. “And you know why.”

Crossing his arms, Blaine leaned against the wall. “Because she wasn’t around to sing with you anymore.”

“After she was gone, it… I could always talk; that was always fine. You _kept_ me talking. But whenever I tried to sing, it just… Nothing would come out,” Kurt said, wincing and heaving a deep sigh. “What if I’m terrible? It’s a really hard song.”

“You’re going to be great, I know it,” Blaine assured him.

“Will you sing backup for me?”

“Of course I will. Come on, Twentieth Century Boy.”

Kurt froze, looking around at him with something unreadable in his eyes. “What did you just say?”

“I—Twentieth Century Boy,” Blaine replied, regarding him curiously.

Whatever the reason, the nickname seemed to light a fire under Kurt and he grabbed Blaine’s hand, running out of the restroom with him in tow. Marcie had just finished her song and was taking a bow, her audience enraptured and applauding with whoops and cat calls. Kurt broke their grasp and made a beeline for April, whispering something into her ear. Her face lit up and she made short work of spreading whatever the message was to the rest of the band, and before Blaine knew it, she was at the mic and announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a special treat for you now. I’ve known this next performer since my first year of college, and while I’ve always had my ideas about him, I’ve never heard the little fucker sing. Ann Arbor, about to rock the house with T-Rex’s _Twentieth Century Boy,_ please give it up for Kurt Hummel!”

Taking his place at the backup mic with Marcie, Blaine couldn’t help but grin—he should have known. Kurt glanced at him over his shoulder, face set in a stoic expression tinged with defiance; as Liam began playing [the song’s](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/54538545230) dirty and catchy introduction, Blaine watched Kurt grab the mic in one hand and its stand in the other.

When Kurt began to sing, arching his back and twisting to the side of the mic to look straight at him, Blaine stuttered over his backing vocals.

 _“Friends say it’s fine, friends say it’s good, everybody says it’s just like rock and roll.”_ Kurt was practically growling into the mic, his lower register unpracticed but strong and raw. If Blaine had been making love in his performance, then Kurt was laying himself at the foot of a temple in worship. _“I move like a cat, charge like a ram, sting like a bee, babe, I wanna be your man.”_

Kurt took the mic from its stand and stalked across the stage toward Blaine like a predator with its prey in sight, and it was all Blaine could do to remember his part. _“Well it’s plain to see you were meant for me, yeah,”_ Kurt sang, right into Blaine’s ear, so close that Blaine was hearing his voice as it was rather than through the speakers. _“I’m your boy, your twentieth century toy.”_

And then he was gone with a shake of his hips, strutting across the stage in those obscenely tight leather pants, turning back only once to blow Blaine a smug, triumphant kiss. He looked alive, more alive than Blaine had ever seen him, and he’d never been so sexy.

Kurt never stayed in one spot for too long, picking out members of the crowd to whom he would sing a line or two before moving on, and by the time he reached the final chorus of the song they were all begging and screaming for him, even some of the guys. Blaine watched them all with a tight ball of possessiveness in his gut, wanting nothing more than to grab Kurt and run with him back to the R.V., where he’d spend hours showing Kurt that he was the only one who knew just how to undo him.

 _“Twentieth century toy, I wanna be your boy. Twentieth century boy, I wanna be your toy,”_ Kurt belted out, one arm raised into the air and stamping his foot. Marcie stepped up for her trumpet solo to close the song and Kurt began thrusting his hips forward in time with the beat—if it had been anyone else it could have looked ridiculous, but this was Kurt Hummel: tall, beautiful, yoga enthusiast, incredible in bed and, apparently, secret rock star. Blaine sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he was wearing such tight jeans, because he was nearing the stage of being hard that was almost uncomfortable, and the last thing he needed was anyone seeing exactly what Kurt did to him.

As the song ended, Kurt windmilled his arms and dropped into a crouch low on the stage with his palm slapped to the floor; the crowd cheered louder than they had for anyone yet—they wanted sex, and Kurt had given it to them, pure and undiluted.

Feeling suddenly exhausted and needing a moment to collect himself, Blaine scrambled down from the stage and pushed his way to the bar, where he promptly asked the bartender for two glasses of water.

As surreptitiously as possible, he reached down to adjust his jeans just enough to relieve some of the pressure. One way or another, Kurt was going to be his end; he was sure of it.

He was drinking deeply from his glass when he caught a flash of pink and blond in his peripheral vision, and he turned to see Kurt rushing toward him with a dazzling smile lighting up his features.

“Kurt! Holy hell, you were—“

Kurt reached forward and grabbed Blaine by the front of his jacket, hauling him into a fast and crushing kiss; when he pulled back, hands trembling, he whispered “thank you,” over and over again against Blaine’s lips.

Heart clenching in his chest, Blaine cupped the back of Kurt’s neck, breathing heavily. Kurt pressed his forehead against Blaine’s temple, and all Blaine could dazedly think was, _mission accomplished._

 

**Distance: 5,527 miles**

*

**Day 046: Thursday 1st November, 2012  
The First Stage (Indiana)**

_“Seriously, did they ever film anything decent in Indiana?”_

“Natural Born Killers _doesn’t look too bad.”_

_“Yes, fine, whatever. Now talk to me more about how we’re only ‘loosely’ planning to visit Pawnee.”_

 

Much to Blaine’s dismay, Pawnee did not exist in the state of Indiana.

Wanting to preserve as much of the magic as possible—as much magic as there was to be had in Indiana, at least—Blaine had declared a rule that neither he nor Kurt were allowed to plan what they were going to be doing when they got there, simply that they were going to visit the town that was the setting of his favorite TV show, _Parks & Recreation,_ and they would figure out the rest later.

When the GPS had told them, however, that there were towns by the name of Pawnee in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas, but not in Indiana, their lack of plans proved to be something of a problem for Kurt. He had taken control of the navigation, locating a campground in Portage within minutes before setting about finding something for them to do nearby.

“Have you ever thought about directing a post-apocalyptic disaster movie?” Kurt had asked, scrolling through an article on his phone.

“Only always,” Blaine had replied, which was how Kurt had decided to program the GPS to direct them to the disused and derelict Union Station in Gary.

The station was a husk; there was no other way to describe it. There were large boards blocking the main entrance but it was simply a matter of walking through a large gap in order to get inside, and Kurt found himself in silent awe of just how much wreck and ruin there could be inside a single building when outside, it had only blemishes. The main hall was littered with debris, there was obvious, yet old, fire damage lining the walls near the roof, and a lone armchair sat off-kilter in the center, its light blue upholstery shredded and torn.

He and Blaine separated to walk opposite sides of the perimeter—as close as they could get to it through the thick scattering of wood and metal, at least.

“Hello!” Blaine called from across the hall, and it echoed in a way that made the hairs on the back of Kurt’s neck stand up.

 _“[I don’t like walking around this old and empty house](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/54903309761),”_ he sang out, and it still struck him how unfamiliar his voice sounded.

 _“So hold my hand, I’ll walk with you, my dear,”_ Blaine responded, smiling as he turned to cross the expansive floor.

Wood creaked above Kurt’s head in the breeze that whipped through the exposed interior, and he kept singing to try and stave off the feeling of a ghost at his back. _“The stairs creak as you sleep, it’s keeping me awake.”_

_“It’s the house telling you to close your eyes.”_

_“And some days I can’t even trust myself.”_

_“It’s killing me to see you this way.”_

By the time they met in the middle, Kurt was mirroring Blaine’s warm smile; they were somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, and a frisson of a rebellious thrill raced the length of his spine as they sang in unison, _“’Cause though the truth may vary this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.”_

Laughing giddily, Kurt took Blaine’s arms and wrapped them around his own waist, and Blaine hooked his chin over Kurt’s shoulder as he turned back to face the direction from which he’d come.

Set into the wall, almost indistinguishable from the blackened and dirty wall, was a simple paneled door, inconspicuous save for the rusted padlock holding it shut.

“I wonder what’s through there,” he mused aloud just as he felt Blaine look up, arms tensing and tightening around him. Before he could register what was happening, Blaine was yanking him backward—less than a second later, a thick wooden beam plunged to the floor in front of them with a deep, resounding thud.

 _“Jesus,”_ Blaine exclaimed loudly; Kurt couldn’t tell which one of them was trembling, and he turned to wrap his arms around Blaine’s neck, his breathing ragged.

“My hero,” he said in an attempt to inject some levity, but the reality of it hit him all at once—if Blaine had been a second too late, or if he hadn’t noticed at all… “You just saved our lives, _fuck.”_

“Are you okay?” Blaine asked, his voice mangled and strung tight.

“I’m fine,” Kurt answered automatically. Suddenly ill at ease, he wriggled out of Blaine’s grasp—he was as far from fine as possible. In truth, he had never felt more powerless.

 

Kurt was back in the old train station, but he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. The inside looked completely different—still a husk, but as if it had been used in recent memory. The grouting between the white brick tiling on the lower half of the walls was turning grey and brown, the wood of the benches worn and faded. The beige flooring was cracked and raised in places, and in the upper corners of the room, black mold mottled the marble walls.

He expected to feel the same sense of trepidation and foreboding, but all he felt was an overwhelming sadness that this place had been forgotten. Blaine’s grip on his hand was tight, though Kurt couldn’t recall if it had been there from the start or if it had just appeared. He ran the fingers of his free hand along the backs of the benches, pressing into the dust and leaving behind fingerprints at intervals.

They turned to the padlocked door, and walked in a beam of sunlight that poured in from behind them. Kurt’s shadow stretched in front of him—how curious it was that Blaine’s was cast to the side.

“I have something for you,” Blaine said, his voice hushed, and they stopped in the middle of the aisle as Kurt turned to face him expectantly. Blaine broke their tight grasp and held Kurt’s hand palm facing upward; out of his pocket he drew an old-fashioned barrel key and pressed it into Kurt’s hand. “Don’t be gone too long, sweetheart.”

Before Kurt could ask what he meant, Blaine softly dropped a kiss to the hollow of Kurt’s neck, and then was gone.

Kurt weighed the key in his hand, trying to learn the measure and balance of it. While old-fashioned, it looked brand new, not a single mark tarnishing the brass. A knocking began, sounding like it came from behind the paneled door; Kurt strode toward it without hesitation, scrambling to fit the key in the lock as the knocking grew louder and more insistent.

Silence fell suddenly, the only sound slicing it apart the ominous creaking of the door as it swung wide open. The closet beyond was darkened and the air thick with age, its only contents a small, dainty music box perched in the center of the floor. It was a simple design: square, about six inches wide and four inches deep, and the dark wood of the lid was inlaid with a crescent moon, two stars, and two musical notes.

Slowly, Kurt wound the silver handle and opened the lid. Inside, a pearlescent ballerina turned in circles to, peculiarly, the tune of [_The Scientist_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/54903360856) by Coldplay—and all at once, Kurt was thinking of the kiss that never was, that should have been, that would have cancelled out all other kisses.

Lying on the bottom of the music box was a single train ticket, printed with Chicago as the destination. Carefully tucking the music box, still open, into the crook of his elbow, he pulled out the ticket and studied it curiously.

 _I know what’s in Chicago,_ he thought.

Stepping out of the closet and glancing through the window of the waiting room, Kurt saw a train just pulling out of the station. He rushed outside into blazing sunlight, and an electronic screen suspended from the corrugated iron shelter told him that the train was bound for Chicago.

“Did you miss it, sweetheart?” Blaine asked, appearing at his elbow.

“Apparently so,” Kurt replied.

“There’ll be another one along shortly,” Blaine said, easy confidence in his tone, and suddenly he was sitting on a bench and patting the seat next to him.

“But isn’t this where I’m supposed to be?” Kurt asked as he sat down, perching the music box on his knees. Blaine smiled brighter than the sunshine that lit up the platform and settled his arm around Kurt’s shoulders.

“You’ll come back,” he said, tilting Kurt’s face towards his. “You always do.”

 _“But tell me you love me,”_ Kurt sang softly, imploringly, even as Blaine was closing the gap between them.

 _“Come back and haunt me,”_ Blaine replied, his lips barely just brushing Kurt’s, and—

Kurt awoke with a start, jerking upright with an aborted gasp and wondering where he was. His phone was beeping with an email alert, and he sank back against his pillows, scrubbing a hand through his messy bed-head. There was a cold, empty space in the bed next to him, and he glanced over to Blaine’s side of the bed to find a note that read, _Cupboards empty, went out in search of breakfast. Back soon, rock star._

It was too hot, the sheets tangled around his legs, and Kurt threw them off unceremoniously. He clambered out of bed with little grace, grabbing his phone and stumbling over to the closet to take out his yoga mat. Humming absently under his breath, taking solace from the simple pleasure of finally being free to let the music flow out of him, he spread out the mat in the living area and began his warm-up stretches.

The dream played on his mind even as he tried to push it away: why did he have to remember this one when it was rarer than a blue moon for him to recall his dreams? It was as if he’d been gazing at a surrealist painting, trying to discern the meaning behind it, and someone had come striding up to him and hit him over the head with the truth.

 _“Oh, take me back to the start,”_ he sang under his breath, the final word disappearing into a growl of frustration at the memory of his fifteen-year-old self missing his first kiss, _The Scientist_ playing in the background.

Blaine had been wearing those yellow pants that Kurt outwardly professed to abhor but secretly loved on him, particularly against the blue start-and-stop threads of his favorite comforter, and in a tremulous whisper Kurt had confessed his deepest, darkest secret with the words, “Blaine, I think—no. I _know._ I'm gay.”

Blaine had laughed, traded Kurt’s confession for his own, and then tilted Kurt’s entire world view by slyly asking, “Wanna make out?”

Kurt had spluttered with a hot blush and eyes blown wide before Blaine told him to relax, that it was a joke, and then paused and said, “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Kurt had whispered.

“Would you—let me try something?” Blaine had asked in an uncharacteristically shy voice, and Kurt nodded automatically. Blaine moved closer, curling his fingers around Kurt’s knees, and his tongue darted out to wet his lips as he leaned in. Kurt’s heart had begun to race; he was about to get his first kiss, from none other than his best friend in the whole world… And just as his eyes had fluttered closed, he heard the front door burst open downstairs—Burt and Carole home from their date.

Afterward, they’d never spoken of it again, the matter too big for them to make sense of, let alone address. They’d simply reverted to what they’d always been to one another: best friends, pillars of support, and nothing more.

Kurt reached over to his phone and hit shuffle; as he sank into a relaxed sun salute, he let the music regulate his breathing and guide his thoughts into quiet reality:

He was absolutely, positively, emphatically _not in love with Blaine._ He couldn’t be; Kurt Hummel did not fall in love. Moving through a series of simple poses, working purely on muscle memory, he didn’t allow himself to wonder if that first missed kiss should have only been a _near_ miss; if they’d been supposed to revisit the experience soon afterward and make something of it; if what they’d always shared was love—love that at first hadn’t known it was love, and was now trying to be.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kurt said to himself, “because it’s not love.”

At his very core, he was angry with himself for letting his power shift. He’d disliked the person he’d become while Blaine was in London, but he liked this version of himself even less—what had he become, mooning after his best friend like a love-struck teenage girl? There was no way that he was in love with Blaine, that he’d been in love with Blaine all along. The very notion was laughable at best, because how could one person be _that_ stupid? He wasn’t that person at all—Kurt Hummel was nothing if not in complete control of himself. Calling it ‘love’ would give Blaine the power—real, terrible power—to break him.

Kurt was simply out of his element, and what he needed to do was find a way to step back, recalibrate, and take back the person he used to be.

He could still feel the thick, crisp paper of the train ticket between his fingers, and as he moved from a high lunge to a low, bringing his hands together in front of his chest with his eyes closed, he knew where it would happen.

It would happen in Chicago.

 

**Distance: 5,714 miles**

*

**Day 49: Sunday 4th November, 2012  
White Noise (Illinois)**

_“God, how many times must we have watched it?”_

_“Lots of times, and that’s because it’s flawless and perfect.”_

_“…Sounds like we’ve got our movie!”_

 

In Blaine’s second year of college, he and Kurt both took a video editing class to fulfill one of their core requirements. The final project of the semester was to take a well-known song and use it to create a short film in the style of a music video, but to either flip or reinterpret the original meaning of the song.

Blaine had chosen _Mr. Brightside_ by The Killers, and it didn’t take him long to come up with his idea. Within a week he had papered the college with posters headlined, _If You’ve Ever Been Cheated On, Help Out a Fellow Student by Reading This!_ In hindsight, it was a bit of a dirty tactic, but he’d gotten an overwhelming response. His idea for the music video had been to film students from all different majors and areas of the campus lip-syncing the words to the song, and edit it all together to tell the story not of the song itself, but of the aftermath, the lingering trauma, and the fruitless wish to one day get even.

No matter how much Blaine begged, Kurt had refused to participate in the main part of the video, insisting upon Blaine retaining his artistic integrity by only using subjects who had been cheated on. He had, however, agreed to perform his fire poi routine as part of the video, to give it the atmosphere of orchestrated yet raw chaos Blaine was hoping to achieve.

On his last day of filming, Blaine had been out on the quad looking through some of his footage when Kurt found him. He’d looked troubled, but at first Blaine thought nothing of it, as Kurt had been bitching about the difficulties he was having with his own music video—a doomed love story between an assassin and her mark, set to Nelly Furtado’s  
 _Try—_ for days already.

And then Kurt had said, “You don’t need to double up on April’s lines anymore,” and Blaine had frozen at once, not missing the meaning behind his words. They had filmed Kurt’s lines that same day, and later, Blaine’s professor had praised him for the surprising but effective artistic choice of making the mesmerizing fire poi performer the last shot of the video, and therefore, the overall subject of the video’s story.

In those days, Kurt had talked about somehow getting even with Max. And the closer they got to Chicago, where Max had moved after graduation, the more nauseous Blaine felt—he knew exactly what was going to happen, and was powerless to stop it. There was momentum building behind it, driving a wedge—however hopefully temporary—between them, and as they turned into a residential neighborhood, Blaine couldn’t help but think of the look in Kurt’s eyes in his two close-up shots in the video. The light in his eyes had been dull and muted, overtaken by something incommunicably sad, and it was a look that Blaine had hoped he’d never see again.

Until they’d almost been hit by that wooden beam inside the train station in Gary, he hadn’t.

It had stayed there ever since, even throughout the previous day when they’d been pounding the pavement and seeing the sights of Chicago proper. Kurt had been quiet, eyes not lighting up the way Blaine had been hoping and expecting when they took pictures of their distorted reflections in The Bean, and he’d been almost unresponsive during grabbing a quick bite and a coffee at the top of the John Hancock building, even when Blaine had attempted to start a game of ‘What Would We Film Here?’ It was then that Blaine had realized exactly what Kurt was doing, and he wondered if a little of the light in his own eyes had been snuffed out.

Kurt cut the engine outside a small, cozy-looking brick-built house with a hunter green front door. He turned to face Blaine, but Blaine trained his gaze on a spot somewhere in the middle-distance, for what could he say? What could he _do?_ Nothing. There was nothing. Kurt was going to do whatever he felt like he needed to do, regardless of whether Blaine gave him a reason not to. What reason could Blaine come up with, anyway? It wasn’t like Kurt owed him anything—perhaps in another life, he would have. Perhaps in another life, they wouldn’t even be here.

“I’m staying in the R.V. tonight,” he said gruffly.

“I thought you might,” Kurt replied, and then, hesitantly, “How did you know?”

Blaine snorted derisively and shook his head. “The last time we did anything was back in Michigan. You’re warming up; I get it.”

“B…” Kurt trailed off, his voice soft and tinged with regret.

“It’s fine,” Blaine said shortly, unclipping his seat belt. “Come on. Let’s go.”

He was halfway to the door when he felt Kurt grab his arm and spin him around; Kurt kissed him roughly, fisting his hands in Blaine’s hair, and it felt like an apology that Blaine didn’t have the wherewithal to brush off or turn down. Instead he kissed Kurt back just as forcefully and sucked in a breath of hollow air when he pulled back, then bolted from the R.V. before he had the chance to do something he’d regret, like lock the door and drive off with Kurt little more than a hostage.

The front door was opening before they even made it up the steps, and _God,_ Blaine had forgotten just how intensely he disliked everything about Max Whitley, from his overly preppy fashion sense to his too-bright smile.

“Kurt! Blaine! Man, so good to see you guys,” he greeted them, jogging down the steps and sweeping them both into a semi-awkward hug. Merely being in his presence was enough to remind Blaine of how lost Kurt had been with him: happy but not his happiest, trying for something like what everyone else had, and ultimately being betrayed when he didn’t ‘measure up.’ While Blaine knew Kurt hadn’t been in love with Max, he might have been on his way to it—and when Kurt loved, it was fearfully, and he held on with everything he had. It wasn’t something to be thrown away or taken lightly, and that was exactly what Max had done.

“Good to see you, too,” Kurt said.

“Let’s go catch up, huh?” Max asked, though he left no room for argument as he motioned them both inside, and Blaine didn’t miss the way his gaze raked up and down Kurt’s form as Kurt passed him.

He gritted his teeth and said nothing—a practice he continued to employ throughout the entirety of the two hours Kurt and Max spent catching up, only responding when spoken to and just nodding along the rest of the time. He knew he was acting like a petulant child, but couldn’t seem to help it—moreover, he didn’t particularly want to.

 _At least there’s beer,_ he thought upon finishing his third bottle in as many hours. The buzz in his limbs was the only pleasant thing about the afternoon’s rapid fade into evening—which apparently took with it the need for such things as personal space and decorum.

They were sitting in Max’s living room, three walls painted a neutral cream and the other a deep red that framed the large plasma screen. Before Blaine could protest, they were watching _The Breakfast Club—_ the very same movie that he and Kurt had decided would be their movie for Illinois. He hadn’t thought he could be any more pissed off, but the movies were _their_ thing—particularly this one, which they’d watched so many times together that Blaine had lost count—not to be shared with anyone else. Especially not Max.

He tried not to wonder whether he was equating sharing the movie with sharing Kurt, and instead just kept on drinking. His mind became a wasteland, full of regrets and the faceless dozen men before him who had all taken the opportunity he had missed time and time again. He coiled deeper and deeper within himself, and the more beer he sucked down, the more things felt terribly, terribly wrong—so, of course, he just drank more.

 _Where the hell did I think I fit?_ Blaine thought bitterly. He was sitting at one end of Max's pristine leather couch, and every time he happened to glance over, Kurt and Max were sitting closer and closer together. _What kind of nerve must I have had to actually think that I'm really and truly special, any different from the rest of them?_

Shaking himself mentally, he made an attempt to focus once more on the movie, where Bender was telling Claire to stick to the things she knew: _"Shopping, nail polish, your father's BMW, and your poor, rich, drunk mother in the Caribbean."_

Would he have found himself here, on this couch, getting progressively more drunk if he'd just stuck to what he knew and not given in to this thing between them? Or would he be downtown at some club, a body wrapped around him as he let himself go, knowing no different because until Kurt, he'd never believed he was all that special to begin with?

 _No,_ he forced himself to think. _No, stop this. He might make you feel special but it's not his job to do it all the time. Stop this._

When he glanced over, Blaine could see Kurt and Max's fingers brushing between the ever-decreasing space between their thighs. Then Max had his arm around Kurt’s shoulders, and Kurt’s eyes were fluttering closed; he let out a pleased hum as Max nosed along the side of his face.

Blaine squeezed his bottle so tightly that he was sure it would shatter in his grip, and leaped up as if the couch had burned him. Max and Kurt sprang apart for a second, and if it weren’t for the terrible wave of nausea coursing through him, Blaine might have laughed at the way Max almost cowered behind Kurt. He always had been a complete chicken-shit.

“I’m leaving,” Blaine managed to grit out between his clenched teeth, eyes boring into Kurt, who didn’t quite seem able to meet his gaze. “I’ll be in the R.V. You can come find me when you’re done here.”

He paused only for a moment—waiting for Kurt to say something, to stand up and take his hand and walk right out the door with him—before turning on his heel and striding purposefully out of the living room, down the hall, and out the front door. Head held high, he slammed the door behind him for good measure.

 _I should have talked him out of coming,_ he thought in vain as he climbed into the R.V. and pulled the door closed behind him. _I should have seen him so much sooner than this. I should have kissed him the day we came out to each other, or any of the times I wondered what it would be like. I should have done so much_ more.

Already annoyed at himself for how much he'd had to drink and, therefore, not being able to get the hell out of Dodge—aside from the inside of Max Whitley's house, the last place on earth Blaine wanted to be right now was in his fucking driveway—he realized that he had nothing to do but wait for Kurt to…

“Ugh,” Blaine groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face as if he could wipe from his mind’s eye a sudden rush of flashbulb imagery: Kurt’s bare torso; Kurt biting the very corner of his bottom lip; Kurt smiling wickedly as he wrapped his fingers around Blaine’s length. Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, doing all the things they had been doing together but instead doing them with Max, a person who undoubtedly knew his way around Kurt’s body just as well as—if not better than—Blaine did.

The thought made him itch, and he berated himself as he paced the length of the R.V., studiously avoiding even a glimpse of the bed. _So fucking stupid, so fucking blind. You're an idiot, Blaine Anderson. An idiot who can't keep your best friend from doing something that'll hurt you both._

Finally, he collapsed onto the couch and pulled out his iPod. He hit shuffle, neither knowing nor caring what song was about to start, because it was all just noise anyway. Minutes passed—ten, twenty, Blaine lost track—and with how much alcohol he'd imbibed, he should, by rights, have been far drowsier. When _Promise_ began to play, however, it shocked him back into wakefulness and West Virginia; sense memories tore their way along his body and he buried his hands in his hair just to give them something to do. But it was no use. He was pissed off and frustrated and, with images of Kurt rising unbidden on the backs of his eyelids, Kurt’s moans ringing in his ears, he was getting hard, painfully so.

He hit shuffle again before giving in entirely and roughly shoving his hand into his briefs. As [_Mr. Brightside_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/55521817365) began playing, he wrapped his fingers around his length and started jerking himself for all he was worth.

Blaine remembered every last frame of that damned music video—by the end of the editing process, he’d never wanted to listen to the song again. But right now, working himself up into a frenzy of frustration and running after his release like it was being dangled in front of him, it seemed oddly apropos. The video cycled in his mind, Kurt’s fire poi routine flashing circles behind his eyes and the faces of every single student he’d featured coming back to haunt him.

Within less than a minute he was panting and grunting, not caring what noise he made because he just needed to be done.

Before he could stop himself, he was picturing Kurt with all of them. His face was the only one with any clarity among the blur, frame after frame and angle after angle spliced together until the video in his mind was no longer a chaotic and beautiful performance of a fire poi performer, but something else entirely—something more closely resembling a nightmare.

His back arched upward with an almost painful snap when he came, an abandoned cry of Kurt’s name wrapped around his tongue and the final frame of the video frozen in the forefront of his mind. It was that same look he’d never wanted to see again but, for some perverse reason, suddenly couldn’t get enough of: the thunderous gray overtaking the usual deep blue of Kurt’s eyes, a look that Blaine knew he would never deliberately put there himself.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fucking hell,” he whispered, half-sobbing and shuddering as he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes.

For a count of five, he let himself be lost, breathing raggedly and making no attempt to stave off the bile burning the back of his throat or the images of Kurt and Max together.

 _One,_ he counted. _You have more with him than anyone else ever has. Two. So get it together. Three. Don’t be a slave to how you feel. Four. Today you barely stopped short of pissing all over him. Five. You still have a right to be pissed off, but he’s not yours to claim. He's made that clear._

Then, calmly, he switched off his iPod, went to the bedroom, quickly changed into clean underwear and sweats, sat back down on the couch, and closed his eyes for just a second.

The next thing he was aware of was the engine of the R.V. rumbling beneath him, but Blaine didn’t bother moving; a quick check of his watch confirmed that he’d slept for a little under an hour and his head was already throbbing.

It was twenty minutes before Kurt pulled the R.V. into a spacious parking lot somewhere—Blaine hadn’t exactly been paying attention, and he was finding it difficult to care all that much—and switched off the engine. Blaine looked up to see Kurt striding purposely towards him; he swung himself into Blaine’s lap without missing a beat and threw his arms around Blaine’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” Kurt whispered, raspy and strangled, and Blaine’s stomach gave a painful lurch. “I’m sorry, B, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have… Fuck—“

Kurt cut himself short, pulling back just far enough to mold his lips to Blaine’s; it was like a repeat of their earlier kiss, just before this rift had formed between them—only this time, Kurt didn’t taste like Kurt. He tasted like sex and sweat and someone else, and everything was horribly, terribly wrong. Blaine leapt up from the couch and reared away from him, resisting the peculiar urge to laugh, and looked Kurt square in the eye.

“All this for a fuck-and-run?” he spat.

“B, it wasn’t—“ Kurt started, but Blaine held up his hand. He wasn’t in the mood for explanations, good or otherwise.

“Don’t,” he said, moving towards the bedroom and turning his back. “Just don’t.”

 

**Distance: 5,739 miles**


	6. Chapter 6

**Day 051: Tuesday 6th November, 2012  
One Minute to Midnight (Wisconsin)**

_“Hey, pass me the torque wrench?”_

_“Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don’t fail me now.”_

_“Oh my god,_ The Blues Brothers. _I haven’t watched that in years!”_

 

 **Kurt (08:53am)** – _[Sent to: ALL CONTACTS]_ Have you voted?  
 **April (9:12am)** – Yes, dummy. Remember we all did our absentee ballots at the same time?  
 **Toby (10:32am)** – We managed to coordinate lunch breaks so we can head over together—thanks for the reminder.  
 **Marshall (11:01am)** – Of course! Thanks again for all your help with the door to door this summer. Now we wait.  
 **Zoe (11:11am)** – Got my sticker and everything. Make the right wish!  
 **Blaine (12:59pm)** – On my way back, got into a debate with an anti-O. They were out of the sandwich you wanted so I got you an Italian Club instead. Need anything else while I’m out?  
 **Jen P (1:44pm)** – IMG_20121106_9368.jpg; voting lines around the block! :)  
 **Dad (4:19pm)** – Taking a quick break before I head back out. Had about twenty so far, mostly people still getting over Sandy. Now relax, you’ve done enough.  
 **Carole (4:54pm)** – Never realized all of this driving around would be so exhausting! Don’t know how you two do it! Getting them all to the polls has been worth it though, even if just for some of the characters I’ve met today. Missing you and Blaine, hope you’re taking care of yourselves.  
 **Finn (5:02pm)** – Just got off work and heading straight to the polling station. Good luck tonight, dude.  
 **Blaine (6:00pm)** – Where are you? It’s starting!

Kurt smiled crookedly, anticipation fluttering at his insides, and pocketed his phone. He was standing outside Madison’s, a bar on King Street, having a much-needed moment to himself after what had been a thoroughly crazy day. It felt freeing beyond measure to have things to occupy his mind, to keep him from thinking too much about how he’d been behaving, and how he’d now spent two lonely nights out on the couch because he couldn’t quite bring himself to address what had and hadn’t passed between him and Blaine.

He’d thought that what he’d done in Chicago was at least partly about revenge, but it hadn’t been about that at all—it had been about proving something he thought he knew about himself but that turned out to be a gross mistruth; an itch that he’d needed to scratch, but when he finally did it wasn’t satisfying in the least. And then he’d seen the hurt in Blaine’s eyes, and his stomach had flipped like a pancake, and he’d known without question that he’d fallen in love with Blaine sometime beyond memory.

But how was that fair? How was it fair to fall in love only to be forced, through circumstance and the rules he’d laid down, to fall back out of it again just as quickly?

In light of everything there was to be done, he and Blaine had reached some sort of unspoken détente, declaring without words a moratorium on their issues so that they could concentrate on following up all of their summer efforts toward both President Obama’s re-election campaign and the campaign for marriage equality in their home state. And today was the day that all their efforts would hopefully come to fruition.

He sighed once, allowing himself a moment’s grace. Somehow, he would make things right between them, but tonight was not the night.

When he stepped inside, Blaine waved him over to the bar with a rueful half-smile. Kurt wound his way through the tall tables and stools crowded with people, grimacing as he passed by a group of students crowded around a small, wall-mounted electronic jukebox playing Amy Winehouse’s _[You Know I’m No Good](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/56021792544),_ and made his way towards Blaine.

“Have they called any yet?” he asked, sliding onto an empty bar stool and taking a sip of the cocktail Blaine slid across to him.

“Indiana and Kentucky for Romney, Vermont for Obama,” Blaine replied succinctly, tilting his head toward Kurt but not looking away from the screen over the bar that was playing NBC News. He rested his elbows on the bar, clasping his hands and absently chewing on his thumbnail; nerves were practically radiating off him in waves. Tentatively, Kurt slid his hand over, fingers splayed and wiggling to catch Blaine’s attention. It felt a little like it had back in Provincetown: a hand reaching out for more where there had never _been_ more. Only this time, it was Kurt trying to push back unturnable tides.

When Blaine finally took his hand, though, Kurt thought that maybe together they could do it.

“What about Question 1? Any news?” he asked, referring to the bill on Maine’s ballot that, if passed, would grant marriage equality to same-sex couples.

Blaine shook his head and took a large gulp of his beer, then grabbed a napkin and wiped across his mouth. “What if—“

“B,” Kurt interrupted, breaking their grasp to loosely work his fingers up into Blaine’s curls. “This is our year.”

At last, Blaine gave him a real smile. After he’d briefly leaned into Kurt’s touch, and after Kurt had bitten his lip against the urge to kiss his smile wider, they joined hands again and settled in to watch.

The hours passed at a crawl, and the tension only grew as more and more people filtered into the bar. Despite the air conditioning and the cool temperatures outside, it quickly became hot, and before long, the scents of beer and body odor were lazily permeating the air.

At 7:00pm, they cheered as Maine was called for Obama along with Illinois, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland. At 8:30pm, the entire bar erupted with triumphant whoops as Wisconsin went blue. And at 10:54pm, when early results showed marriage equality ahead in Maine, Blaine’s unfailing grip on Kurt’s hand suddenly became so tight that it almost hurt. His expression was clouded as he looked at Kurt, his gaze piercing.

Suddenly uncomfortable under the weight of Blaine’s scrutiny, Kurt shifted in his seat and signaled the bartender for another round.

“Do you think you’ll ever capitalize on it?” Blaine asked.

“Capitalize on what?”

“Marriage equality,” Blaine clarified. “If we get it, I mean.”

“Of course we’ll get it,” Kurt said, repeating, “This is our year.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not?” Blaine probed.

“I mean, I’d like to think there’s someone out there who could put up with me ‘til death do us part, but…” Kurt trailed off with a shrug.

“There _is_ someone, you know,” Blaine said, as matter-of-factly as if he was commenting on the weather.

“What are you saying?” Kurt asked slowly.

Blaine took a long, deliberate drink from his bottle, and squarely met Kurt’s questioning look. “There _is_ someone who can put up with you. He’s been doing it seventeen years already.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,” Kurt said weakly, his stomach twisting into a tight knot. There was no way Blaine could be saying what Kurt thought he was saying—not with their rules, and especially not with what Kurt had done.

“Just that,” Blaine replied, his voice infuriatingly mild.

“What about you?” Kurt asked, shifting in his seat to more fully face Blaine.

A soft, barely-there smile had the corners of Blaine’s mouth twitching, and at length he responded, “If the time was right, if he was the right guy… Yeah, I think I’d like to get married.”

“Proposal?” Kurt prompted, resting his chin in his hand. For all the trouble he had with the word ‘love,’ and despite the fact that he’d vehemently deny any such accusation, buried beneath his layers upon layers of armor and resistance was a young man who, try as he might, couldn’t help being a romantic.

“Something simple,” Blaine answered, looking thoughtful. “Quiet and intimate, just the two of us. Not on an anniversary or a birthday or Christmas. _Definitely_ not on Valentine’s.”

“You or m—him?” Kurt forced out, quickly covering his slip and clearing his expression as much as he was able. He couldn’t keep letting his mind run away with his tongue, he _couldn’t—_ it felt too much like cheating himself. He cleared his throat, and added, “Would you be the one getting swept off your feet or the one doing the sweeping?”

“I hadn’t ever really thought that far ahead,” Blaine admitted, picking at the label on his beer bottle where the condensation was causing it to peel away from the glass. “Either way you end up pretty vulnerable.”

“Isn’t that the point of love, though? Being vulnerable but being okay with it?”

“No. It’s being vulnerable but trusting the other person not to betray that vulnerability.”

Kurt found himself nodding even at the same moment as it hit him with blunt, bruising force exactly what Blaine was talking about. It was an unexpected segue, but a segue nonetheless—perhaps now was the time to make things right, after all.

Not a second after he opened his mouth to speak, everyone in the bar cheered. Kurt’s head snapped up to look at the television screen, where he saw a smartly dressed blonde anchorwoman holding her earpiece and saying, “Once again, that’s Iowa, California, and Washington for President Obama. I’m just waiting for confirmation…“

A deathly quiet enveloped the inside of Madison’s, and without giving it a moment’s thought, Kurt leaned over to press his forehead to Blaine’s temple, eyes slipping closed as he waited. Blaine squeezed Kurt’s knee and left his hand there; Kurt covered it with his own, and took a deep breath.

_“And with two hundred and seventy-four electoral votes, we are now calling this election for President Barack Obama.”_

The force of Blaine’s hug, arms thrown tightly around him with Blaine’s face buried in the hollow of his neck, almost toppled Kurt from his stool. He grabbed the bar with one hand to right himself and then held Blaine tightly, thoughtlessly pressing a fleeting kiss into his hair.

Looking around the bar, he saw other couples and groups of friends hugging, exchanging high fives and fist bumps, and there were even two girls by the door to the restrooms wiping away each other’s joyful tears. The group of students sitting by the jukebox had changed the music to _[Proud](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/56021862911)_ by Heather Small, and Kurt grinned despite himself, letting himself revel in the simple, uncomplicated, unbridled elation of the moment.

Blaine had always been so expressive that Kurt never had difficulty reading his emotions on his face—an exaggerated downward quirk of his mouth when trying not to laugh; a tilt of his head and furrowing of his brow when giving sympathy; a slight but unmistakable widening of his eyes and a flush of anticipation in his cheeks when getting turned on—but when Blaine broke their hug, clearing his throat and awkwardly settling his open hands on his thighs like he didn’t know what to do with them, Kurt had no idea what to say or do. The water was flowing fast between them instead of beneath the bridge, but did he need to simply divert it or build the bridge from the ground up? At this point, either action looked likely to require a Herculean effort, and skills he couldn’t be sure he possessed.

Thankfully, the rest of the evening passed in a blur of exchanging goodwill and congratulations with the other patrons of the bar as they all waited for Romney’s concession and Obama’s acceptance. By 11:59pm, in the midst of the merriment surrounding them, Kurt had almost forgotten about Question 1.

One minute to midnight, and the news ticker at the bottom of the television screen suddenly read, ‘Breaking News.’ Kurt sat up straighter on his stool, his hand automatically gravitating toward Blaine’s. A replay of Romney’s concession speech cut to the same blonde anchorwoman from earlier, her make-up looking like it had been retouched.

She was smiling as she reported, “And while we’re waiting for President Obama’s acceptance speech, Maine has this evening made history as the first state to vote by referendum to back marriage equality.”

It was as if he and Blaine had formed their own private vacuum of two: sound ceased to exist, and the air was hard to come by. There were tremors in Blaine’s hands, almost imperceptible at first but growing until he was shaking violently, his eyes still glued to the television screen.

“Hey,” Kurt said, squeezing his hand. “Hey, look at me. B, _look at me.”_

Blaine’s eyes swam and shone, even in the dimmed light of the bar, and for a moment he looked as if he didn’t recognize Kurt. Then his expression cleared, and he pitched forward to take Kurt’s face in his trembling hands and kiss him: softly and tenderly, like a first kiss at the end of a first date, at the beginning of the rest.

 _God, I love you,_ Kurt thought, stretching himself into the kiss and welcoming the feeling of Blaine’s full lips skating over his own in long bursts, not caring at all that they were in public and acting like the very people he’d professed to hate all the way back in Florida.

Blaine inhaled sharply and broke away, eyes remaining closed for a moment. Kurt glanced to their left to see the bartender watching them with a wry smile.

“I’m guessing you guys are from Maine?” he asked, taking their empties and putting them behind the bar. At Kurt’s nod, he continued, “Champagne’s on the house if one of you proposes.”

Blaine snorted, and it all came screaming back. “Unlikely when we’re not even an item,” he said, a weariness in his voice that Kurt hated with every fiber of his being.

“Could’ve fooled me,” the bartender said, and moved off to serve some customers further down the bar—or rather refuse service, considering the way they were already practically falling over one another.

Surprisingly, the assumption didn’t irritate Kurt like he was expecting it to. The way he and Blaine interacted with one another, he couldn’t exactly blame someone for thinking they were together. Quite rightly, people believed what they could see—but in a way, Kurt mused, that also blinded them.

He, on the other hand, was seeing clearly—perhaps for the first time. He knew exactly what he needed to do, and that was to pursue his atonement, clear the air, and wipe away this heaviness that had come between them. It was almost too intense for him to bear.

“Told you it was our year,” Kurt said, and Blaine shot him a sheepish grin. It looked freer than Kurt had felt all night, and he thought that maybe the tide was turning anyway.

 

**Distance: 5,900 miles**

*

**Day 052: Wednesday 7th November, 2012  
Clear-Air Turbulence (Minnesota)**

_“Oh my god, Prince. We have to watch this, Blaine, we_ have _to!”_

_“You’re getting no argument from me.”_

_“Okay, so, Minnesota:_ Purple Rain. _Onto Iowa…”_

 

“Oh my _god,”_ Blaine wheezed between bouts of laughter. Kurt was still splayed out on the shiny, waxed wooden floor in front of the lane, holding his stomach and eyes watering from his own giggles. “This was the best idea _ever.”_

They were at the Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis, a curious place that somehow managed to be a restaurant, bar, theater, and bowling alley all at once. They had most of the bowling area to themselves, the only other people there a group of six hipster-looking students occupying the lane at the far end. Upon setting foot inside, Blaine had immediately fallen in love with the atmosphere of the place, understanding straight away why it was listed as an LGBT hangout.

For Blaine, it was an escape—a way to get out of his head and cut loose for a while without having to think too much about anything. It had all gotten to the point of being too intense, and he’d mostly gone beyond wanting to hash it out, because what was the point? Obviously, Kurt wasn’t ready for a relationship of any kind—and that was fine, because Blaine wasn’t asking for one. Particularly not now.

By sleeping with Max, Kurt had given Blaine the reality check he’d sorely needed, and now they could just move forward in the way that they needed to. They were friends first. Everything else had to come second.

“Okay, okay,” Kurt said breathlessly, struggling to his feet and brushing off the seat of his pants as he looked at the pins down the lane. “Did I even hit any?”

“Gutter ball,” Blaine called out around a chuckle, raising his voice to carry over the music playing in the bowling alley—a shuffled loop of the new Mumford & Sons album that Kurt and Blaine had both learned by heart over the course of the past month.

“What was it again?” Kurt asked as he came over, walking in time with the beat of _[Holland Road](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/56309662645),_ and Blaine glanced down at the dog-eared laminate titled, ‘BLB Crazy Bowl.’

“One-Eyed Jack,” he said, “You have to turn around twice, cover one eye with your hand, and bowl. That’s how you ended up on your ass.”

“Right,” Kurt replied, blue-green eyes sparkling with some of that light Blaine had been missing in them. He bent over the scorecard and examined it briefly. “Look who’s winning. Two games to one.”

“So _strange,_ especially since I haven’t beaten you since we were sixteen,” Blaine commented, prodding him gently in the ribs and leaning up to speak against his lips, “Stop letting me win.”

Kurt sashayed away with a wink and a wiggle of his hips, retrieving another bowling ball as he went, and Blaine bit his lip against a grin as he thought, _There you are. I missed you._

Blaine watched him follow the instructions from the laminate, rapidly spinning twice in a way that looked again as if the music itself was his partner in a dance. Instead of covering only one eye as the card had instructed, he covered both and sent the ball rapidly spinning into the gutter—sure enough, he ended up falling on his ass for the second time in a row. His bright, musical peals of laughter were infectious, and Blaine leaned on the backs of chairs for support as he staggered over to help him up.

The group of teenagers at the other end of the alley were dancing and spinning one another in time with the song’s stringed refrain, and as Blaine held out a shaking hand to help Kurt up, Kurt glanced over at them.

“Dance with me,” he said, and Blaine complied immediately. It was almost too easy to assume a loose waltz position, letting Kurt lead them around in a slow, smiling dance that was more a shuffle of their feet than any discernible step. He dropped his head to rest on Kurt’s shoulder, inhaling the scent of his cologne and letting the music carry his heavy limbs.

With Kurt humming along to the vocalizations over the strings, the vibrations tickling Blaine’s cheek, he was at once struck by the unfairness of the situation, this state of in-between, of together-but-not. _Should we even have started this?_ he wondered, a fleeting thought full of regret, but regret of what? Of starting, or of not starting soon enough? Because the thing was, Blaine would be Kurt’s in a heartbeat if he asked. He was already Kurt’s, and Kurt was… Wasn’t Kurt his, too?

“I’ve missed us like this,” Kurt murmured, reminding Blaine that no, Kurt wasn’t his—he’d gone out of his way to prove it in Chicago. And Blaine had done _nothing_ to stop it, when he so easily could have. He’d practically given Kurt his blessing. Lips brushing the outer shell of Blaine’s ear, Kurt sang, _“And I’ll still believe, though there’s cracks you’ll see.”_

But of course Kurt was his. Kurt was his but refused to believe it, and though it was a supremely ugly feeling, it pissed Blaine off more than he could stand.

Abruptly breaking their hold and without meeting Kurt’s eyes, he asked, “Can we get out of here?”

Kurt paused, hands slowly falling to his sides, and said, “Sure. Let’s go.”

They’d left the R.V. in the small, mostly empty parking lot behind the Bowl, and Blaine wasted no time in jumping into the driver’s seat. He was pulling out before Kurt had even closed the passenger side door, and sighed inwardly in gratitude when Kurt remained silent.

It was a mere five minute drive to the waters of Lake Calhoun, a straight line up Lagoon Avenue, but to Blaine it felt unending. Anger was charting a fiery path through his veins and he needed to be near the water, to be able to look at it moving under the light of the half-moon and let its perpetual, unchanging ebb ground him again. It wasn’t Maine, it wasn’t the ocean, and it certainly wasn’t getting answers to all of his unasked questions, but it would have to do.

Thankfully, Kurt seemed to realize that Blaine needed some time to himself, and didn’t try to follow him out of the R.V. Blaine’s footsteps were dull thuds as he walked slowly along the narrow dock that jutted out into the water, and he sat down at the end, crossing his legs and closing his eyes.

The night was fresh and uncomplicated, the water calm and still, but his head was a mess of threads tangled up in music and movies and sex. Blaine placed his palms either side of him, flat against the wood of the dock in an effort to ground himself and let the anger drain out of him, worm its way through the wood and down into the water where it would dissipate, but the weight of his own unmet expectations pressed down upon him like a tangible weight that he couldn’t simply shrug off.

He wasn’t surprised when he heard the distinctive click of Kurt’s boots approaching.

“Blaine?” Kurt asked from a few paces back. “What’s going on?”

Taking a deep lungful of air, Blaine let his eyes slip closed, just briefly, before standing to face him. Quietly, he asked, “What are we?”

Kurt sucked in a breath through his teeth and pinched between his eyes, looking thoroughly sorry that he’d even asked; Blaine’s rage crested, and he let the wave take him.

“I’m serious. What are we, why are we doing this? Am I just your safe option because I’m here and willing?”

Kurt dropped his hand and stared him down with a look that made Blaine want to take a step back, but he held his ground. “In what universe would you be _anybody’s_ safe option, Blaine?” Kurt spat derisively.

“I’m a pretty safe option for _you,”_ Blaine retorted. “It’s not like you have to commit to anything with us because you already laid down the rules, right? Only I think I missed the part where you get to go fuck your asshole ex-boyfriend just to _prove_ that all this means nothing to you.”

“You can’t be serious right now,” Kurt said incredulously.

“Oh, I’m deadly serious.”

“You _really_ think the reason I did it is to… Fuck, Blaine. Do you even know me at all?”

“You know what? I’m not so sure,” Blaine shot back. “Ever since this whole thing started—no, ever since I got _back,_ you’ve been like a different person.”

“That’s because I _am_ a different fucking person!” Kurt shouted, throwing his arms out to the sides. “And I said I’m sorry for what I did! What more do you want from me?”

“I honestly don’t know anymore,” Blaine said, sighing. “I want you to tell me that this _is_ just a road trip thing.”

There was a long, awful pause that clamored across the space between them, and then Kurt said quietly, “You’re caving.”

“Kurt, don’t—“

“You’re _caving;_ that’s what this is all about!” Kurt exclaimed, and Blaine’s stomach dropped into his shoes.

“Stop it,” Blaine said, walking forward and setting them mere inches apart. “This is about you being selfish and reckless and a complete _idiot_ for thinking any good would ever come of getting back into it with Max fucking Whitley.”

“I wasn’t getting back into it with him, Jesus!”

“Then what _were_ you doing?”

“I was trying to prove to myself that _I_ wasn’t caving!” Kurt screamed.

In the awful, silent seconds that followed, Kurt’s eyes widened and he clapped a hand over his mouth. Not knowing what else to do with the peculiar rush that flooded his system, Blaine tore away Kurt’s hand and replaced it with his lips; he swallowed Kurt’s surprised whimper, licking into his mouth hungrily, and with little finesse. He could feel Kurt’s hands flail before settling, one against Blaine’s chest and the other molded to his neck.

Kurt’s teeth biting almost painfully into Blaine’s bottom lip, he realized that underneath it all, Kurt was still the same person—left to his own devices, however, he’d simply gotten better at hiding that person. But Blaine had found the crack in his armor, and he could feel it widening—in that moment, he knew: he could wait.

“Blaine, I—stop for a second, just—“

“Okay, okay, I’m stopping,” Blaine breathed, pressing his forehead to Kurt’s and cupping his jaw with both hands as they breathed in each other’s air.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Kurt murmured, his breathing ragged. “That’s not us; it’s _never_ been us.”

“I know, I know,” Blaine said quickly, all the fight in him now gone to some far-off place. “I’m sorry, I just got so—“

“I know. I’ve been putting up with it for seventeen years, remember?” Kurt reminded him in a tentatively wry tone, and Blaine couldn’t help but smile. “Can’t we just… Be happy, and still have this?”

 _It doesn’t matter if he wasn’t caving,_ Blaine thought. _It doesn’t matter if he wasn’t falling for me. Just that he thought he could be is proof enough. This is what we are, but maybe…_

“What you did was really, _really_ shitty,” he said.

“I know. And I’m so—“

“But okay.”

“Okay?” Kurt asked hesitantly.

“Okay,” Blaine said with a shrug. “We can still have this.”

“And we—“ Kurt stopped, clearing his throat and dropping his gaze for a moment. “We have to remember that we’re friends first.”

Blaine hesitated. “One condition.”

“I’m listening,” Kurt said.

“I know you well enough to know that you were safe with—with him,” Blaine began, searching Kurt’s eyes and receiving a nod. “But, look… We’ve been going out a lot and sure, we always look out for each other but what happens if one of us isn’t around for some reason? What if one of us gets too drunk to remember to be safe?”

“Well, not that I really want to think about that, but sure. It’s not _impossible,”_ Kurt conceded, shifting from one foot to the other. “What’s your condition?”

“If we’re doing this, then it’s just us,” Blaine said. “No one else. Deal?”

“Deal,” Kurt agreed, nodding and holding out his index finger for Blaine to hook around his own—their old version of a pinky swear.

Blaine shook his head, and tapped his lips. “Here.”

With one eyebrow raised, Kurt stepped forward and sealed the deal with the requisite kiss, settling his arms atop Blaine’s shoulders. Blaine immediately pulled him closer, rocking back on his heels and sending himself stumbling off-balance. Not realizing how close they were to the edge of the dock, he simply giggled into Kurt’s mouth and set his foot back to steady them, only to send them both tumbling over the side.

The water was an icy assault, but beneath the surface lay silence and a similar sensation to the drift between waking and sleeping—suspension, and a gradual slip-slide into a welcome embrace. Kurt was still holding onto him, their legs tangling as they both tried to right themselves, and with one strong kick, they broke the surface.

“It’s fucking _f-freezing,_ oh my _god,”_ Kurt hissed, teeth chattering and water running from his hair in shining rivulets. “What the h-hell did you do that f-for?”

Blaine couldn’t help it; he took one look at the chagrined expression on Kurt’s face and burst out laughing. Kurt punched him in the shoulder.

“It’s not f-funny,” he insisted, but soon his own reluctant laughter was mingling with Blaine’s.

The light of the half-moon was reflecting off the water and casting their surroundings in muted shades of gray and navy, the lake an endless, obsidian depth beneath them. Hands moving slowly through the water, Blaine found Kurt’s legs and hooked them around his waist; even through layers of soaked clothing he could still feel the warmth of Kurt’s skin. _Skin that’s still mine,_ he thought, smiling as he treaded water.

As Kurt’s laughter faded into silence and he looked down at Blaine with quiet contemplation, Blaine let himself drop so that the water lapped gently at his chin.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Given our current predicament, I’m not so sure,” Kurt replied, but the fond crinkle at the corners of his eyes gave away his true answer. “Why do you ask?”

“I wanna try something,” Blaine said.

“I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I can get hard like this,” Kurt said. He gestured around them, the tips of his fingers trailing the surface of the water and forming ripples that spread outward.

“There’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Blaine said, and at Kurt’s raised eyebrow, he continued, “Kiss underwater.”

“Such a romantic,” Kurt replied with a roll of his eyes, and Blaine just had enough time to suck in a breath before their lips connected and they dipped below the surface.

They sank slowly, mouths joined and limbs entwined; once again Blaine let the quietness claim him as he focused purely on the thrilling yet somehow odd sensation of it all. Seeming to sense Blaine’s reluctance to move his mouth lest he cause either of them to fill up their lungs with water, Kurt took Blaine’s face in his hands and gave him his air instead. It made Blaine pleasantly dizzy, and he snaked a lazy hand through the water to tangle his fingers in the drift of Kurt’s hair.

It felt like a first breath, and over all too soon as Kurt unwound his legs from Blaine’s hips and kicked for the surface.

“Was it everything you imagined it’d be?” he asked, chest heaving in the water and hands trembling against the nape of Blaine’s neck.

 _It was better,_ Blaine thought, buying himself time by shaking the water from his curls. Licking his lips, he grinned up at Kurt from beneath his water-logged eyelashes, and said, “I think our technique could use work.”

 

**Distance: 6,174 miles**

*

**Day 054: Friday 9th November, 2012  
Disparity (Iowa)**

_“But isn’t_ Field of Dreams _about baseball?”_

_“Just trust me, Kurt. It’ll change your life.”_

_“Whatever you say…”_

 

“Have you ever had one of those moments where you look at your life and just think, ‘what the hell?’”

Smiling, Kurt glanced around the inside of the barn. Everything was rustic and light, the roof beams strung with fairy lights and globe shades. They were surrounded by tables dressed in white, russet, and laurel green, with baskets of apples and greenery serving as the centerpieces. Waiters dressed almost casually were just clearing away the last remnants of dessert and leaving behind cups of hot cider.

Kurt leaned forward in his seat and took a sip from his cup, tongue darting out to chase a droplet at the side of his mouth before he answered, “Pretty much every day.”

“But seriously, what the hell? This day has been insanely surreal,” Blaine said. Kurt reached over to pat his knee reassuringly.

It had all started when they were driving along I-80 from Des Moines, on their way to the KOA campground in Adel.

An unseasonably warm day for Iowa in November—or so the weatherman had said—Kurt had pushed his sunglasses higher up his nose as he turned to look out of the window at the rolling fields and farmland passing them by. There wasn’t much to see, given that most of the harvests had already taken place over the course of the past three months. All that was left behind was tilled earth, taking time to rest before the freeze of winter and, then, the next planting in the spring. It had felt like watching a piece of the earth as it fell asleep, and were it not for the few other vehicles ahead and the suit-clad man walking along the side of the road trying to hitch a ride, Kurt could probably have fallen asleep with it.

“Look,” Blaine had murmured, gesturing to the hitchhiker, who had been waving wildly at each car and truck as it passed. Something about the man seemed… Familiar, somehow.

“No way,” Kurt had said. “We are _not_ picking up a hitchhiker.”

“He doesn’t exactly look like a hitchhiker, though,” Blaine had reasoned. “He’s wearing a suit.”

“So he’ll be well-dressed while he kills us, how thoughtful,” Kurt had replied. “Just keep driving, B.”

It wasn’t until they were almost at the point of passing the hitchhiker that Kurt realized why he looked familiar—it was Andrew, one half of the couple whose engagement party they had attended back in New Jersey. And now, hours after giving him a ride to the wedding ceremony for which he was running late— _“Long story short, major freak-out last night resulting in a disgusting amount of booze with the guys, who all thought it would be just fucking hilarious to drive my drunk ass out to the middle of a field and leave me without a car or a cell phone.”_ —Kurt found himself seated just to the left of the top table, dressed in his Sunday best with Blaine beside him, both of them half-jokingly named the guests of honor.

Kurt thought that ‘insanely surreal’ was probably the best way of describing it.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice came over the speaker system, the ambient music fading out underneath it. Kurt turned to look at the top table, where both grooms were on their feet, and Toby was talking into a microphone. “Andrew and I would just like to begin by thanking you all for coming to be with us today; we know it was a bit of a trip for most of you, so we really appreciate you being here. And to the New Yorkers: we’re not even a little bit sorry for making you spend the afternoon at the Hillard family farm, so suck it up.”

Laughter broke out from the back of the room, and Kurt couldn’t help but smile at Toby’s easy humor. His blond hair was styled a little more neatly than usual but still a kind of organized chaos, and he was dressed in a charcoal gray suit offset by the light green of his waistcoat. The microphone was in his right hand, his left hand clutching Andrew’s.

“All of you know the story of how we got together, and of course Andrew’s told everyone our proposal story,” Toby said, and groans broke out around the room. He glanced at Andrew with a lopsided grin, and quietly continued, “It’s been, um… It’s been a long journey to get here. If I’m honest, I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to have this—not just in terms of who I fell in love with and where I come from, but also just… Me.

“And then one night, he walked into my bar and changed everything,” Toby said. He took a deep breath and Kurt watched him blink rapidly. He almost didn’t notice when Blaine took his hand. “Andrew, you’ve taught me to ask and to answer, to wait and to fulfill, to love and to be loved. My life began when I poured you that first Negroni, sweetheart. And I don’t want it to ever end.

“Thank you for finding me; thank you for seeing me, and thank you for sticking around even after you tasted my awful Eggs Benedict. Most of all, thank you for agreeing to be my everything,” Toby concluded. Not even a second after he lowered the microphone, Andrew cupped the back of his neck and tugged him down for a brief kiss.

Kurt looked away, feeling like an intruder, and met Blaine’s lingering eyes. Nowadays, he was used to that look of radiating warmth on Blaine’s face—he’d missed it after Chicago, and it had only come back after Lake Calhoun.

Since their fight and ensuing make-up sex—slow and languorous with a single vanilla-scented candle burning on the nightstand, Blaine’s hands traversing his body like a seasoned traveler who knew his path all too well—things had been remarkably uncomplicated between them. It was heady and new, and Kurt was able to finally appreciate it for what it immediately was. He was coasting on the feeling of being on the road with a wonderful man, transcending time and obligation and the need to be anywhere. Though he was tethered to something that he was beginning to realize was bigger than either of them, it no longer felt like a chokehold constricting his air supply—instead, it felt like roots.

“Always has to set a high bar,” Andrew mock-grumbled into the mic as he accepted it from Toby. Kurt heard low chuckles from around the room. “I have a laundry list of people to whom I’m grateful, but there’s just a few I’d like to thank in particular:

“To Mr. and Mrs. Hillard for managing to pull off a summer wedding in November—and in _Iowa,_ no less. This place looks beautiful, and Myra: I’m sorry I ever doubted you,” Andrew said. “To Stuart and Jeff, for being the best groomsmen we could have asked for, even if you did leave me in the middle of a field last night.

“To Kurt and Blaine, our guests of honor, who saved me from having to hitchhike _all_ the way here,” Andrew continued, pointing toward where they were sitting. Kurt felt himself flush under the attention. Blaine raised their joined hands in a semi-triumphant gesture, and Kurt could have sworn he heard a few coos from the back of the room.

“And finally, one last thank you to my late father. He taught me that you have to make the mistakes first so that you know how to recognize them, and…” Andrew trailed off, snaking his arm around Toby’s waist and speaking directly to him, “I know it took me a while, but once I knew, I knew.

“I love you,” he whispered into the mic, and dropped a peck of a kiss to the corner of Toby’s mouth. Kurt squeezed Blaine’s hand, though he didn’t quite know why.

One of the groomsmen—Kurt couldn’t remember which—stood and took the mic from Andrew to announce the first dance. Andrew led Toby to the middle of the dance floor, their matching gold wedding bands catching the light of the globes strung above, and all of the guests turned to watch as Diana Krall’s version of _[I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/58635780724)_ from _My Fair Lady_ began to play.

“This makes you think of your parents’ wedding video, doesn’t it?” Blaine asked quietly.

Kurt sat up straighter in his seat. The smiling couple quietly twirling each other around in his mind’s eye was suddenly so visible before him, he felt he could almost reach out and feel the fabric of their wedding finery. His mother’s best friend, Sarah, was singing _I Could Have Danced All Night_ up on a tiny stage erected in the backyard of his grandparents’ house, and the only source of light spilled through the French doors in the dining room, casting long shadows that stretched into the saplings lining the fence.

He opened his mouth to speak, but found himself without words.

“What’s _your_ first dance song?” Blaine whispered into Kurt’s ear, and Kurt shivered as the hairs on his arms stood on end beneath the fabric of his hastily-ironed white button-down.

“No idea,” Kurt replied. He watched Toby and Andrew begin to turn on the spot, their arms wrapped tightly around one another’s waists. They exchanged indiscernible words with soft smiles.

“Me neither,” Blaine said, and Kurt fixed him with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t know; I guess it’s just something you work out together, you know?”

“I guess so,” Kurt said. He fiddled with the cuff of his shirt and glanced at the two grooms again, looking like they were already removed from the barn, like they were dancing in their own private, walled-off world where nothing else existed but them.

It made Kurt think of the R.V., where it was nothing but him and Blaine and the asphalt ahead.

About halfway through the song, guests began getting up in twos and joining the couple on the polished wooden floor.

“Care to dance?” Blaine asked, breaking their grasp and standing in order to formally offer Kurt his hand. “This song could lend itself well to American smooth, if you’re up for it.”

Kurt regarded him for a moment. “I didn't know you could ballroom dance,” he said as he took Blaine's hand and let himself be pulled into position. “At least, you couldn’t at the last wedding I took you to. Or at prom.”

“You remember those lessons Mom had me take for cousin Laura's wedding when I was fifteen?” Blaine asked, looking suspiciously sheepish. He averted his gaze as they began to move around the floor.

“I remember coming with you to one and it being the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life,” Kurt said, eyebrows rising as Blaine confidently and easily led. “Still is, by the way.”

“Well... I guess I kind of enjoyed it, so I kept going back,” he explained.

“How did I not know this about you? I mean—“ Kurt stopped abruptly as a thought occurred to him. _“This_ is what you were doing every Wednesday night? I just figured you were having your _alone time.”_

“You honestly thought that I scheduled time to jerk off?” Blaine asked incredulously.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Kurt reminded him.

“Once, Kurt,” Blaine groaned. _“Once.”_

Kurt giggled and gave himself over to the dance, the music, and most of all, to Blaine. After all, where better than to let himself belong—if only for one dance—than at a wedding? Diana’s singing was of a man who made the day begin, the tunes he whistled, his ‘good morning’ every day—not only that, but how it had all become second nature to her. And as she sang the words, _“I’ve grown accustomed to the trace of something in the air,”_ Kurt realized that he, too, had gotten used to all of that with Blaine. They had somehow become each other’s good morning and good night.

He was already too far gone, but the atmosphere was heavy with love and magic, and Kurt found it difficult to care.

As the song ended and bled into [an upbeat number](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/58636183610) that he didn’t recognize, they stepped apart and applauded the happy couple along with the rest of the guests. Toby and Andrew exchanged a glance, and made a beeline toward Kurt and Blaine.

“Mind if we cut in?” Andrew asked. Kurt shot Blaine a small smile before moving off with Andrew and relaxing into his looser hold. His hands were bigger than Blaine’s, his fingers softer and less weathered, and he had a couple of inches’ height on Kurt.

It felt like he was in the wrong arms, but he brushed it off. It was just one dance.

“Thank you again for what you did today,” Andrew said as they began a quick, semi-approximation of the foxtrot in time to the beat of the summery song.

“We weren’t exactly just going to leave you by the side of the road,” Kurt replied.

“Well, no, but… Everything needed to be perfect today, and you two helped make that happen,” Andrew said quietly, Toby and Blaine passing by on their left. “Toby, he—the reason I got so drunk last night… He has OCD. It’s gotten much better since when we first met, but last night he had to flick the lights twenty-four times before he left the house. It hasn’t been more than four in about a year, and I just… You know?”

Kurt nodded; he couldn’t quite imagine himself acting differently in the same situation. “In that case, I’m even more glad we were there.”

Andrew smiled at that and fell silent for a moment. Kurt glanced across the dance floor, catching a wink that Blaine threw his way. The song was fun and flirty, and it tugged at Kurt more than he would have expected, capturing his attention and focusing it all on watching the way Blaine moved with another partner: not too close yet not too far, and something not quite clicking in their rhythm. Kurt wondered if that was what Blaine had seen in Chicago.

“You still want him, huh?” Andrew asked wryly. Kurt met his gaze, but kept silent. “I know I’m not wrong.”

“No, you’re not wrong,” Kurt confirmed.

“But you still won’t do anything about it,” Andrew said.

“There you’re wrong,” Kurt corrected him.

Andrew’s eyes flicked between him and Blaine a few times, and then his grin cracked wide. “How’s that working out for you?”

“We’re figuring things out,” Kurt said at length. “It’s complicated.”

Andrew scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I keep trying to tell you—“

“It’s not complicated, I know,” Kurt interrupted.

“No, it’s not,” Andrew said. “Do you love him?”

“I’m trying not to,” Kurt answered without missing a beat, feeling more and more uncomfortable with each passing second.

“Why?”

“He deserves better. And I’m not so good at trusting people with my heart.”

“But Blaine’s not people,” Andrew pointed out, and all of the reasons Kurt had been conjuring in his mind sputtered into darkness. It was as if the words had suddenly become his enemy, loaded with meaning he didn’t always intend to put there. Why was he biting his tongue and feeling only pressure? Why was he biting at all?

Somewhere in the darkest corners of his mind—the ones he rarely felt brave enough to explore—he knew. No matter how much stock he set in movies and television shows, the characters and their journeys to love and redemption and happy endings, that was all they were. Fairytales didn’t happen in real life, and certainly not to him. He’d known that ever since he was nine years old, after all, when a boy in his class called Tyler had felt like the first word written after a long, painful, heartbreaking prologue he’d thought would never end.

Tyler had flushed Kurt’s handmade Valentine’s Day card down the toilet while their classmates looked on, jeering and calling Kurt names that he still didn’t like to hear repeated. He’d bitten his tongue then, the sharp pain pushing back the stinging in his eyes… And he’d never really stopped.

Once more Kurt glanced over, the lyrics of the song speaking of memories and Sunday mornings and summers spent listening to Bob Marley. He was just in time to see Blaine and Toby stop dancing, Blaine stepping back with an almost stricken expression on his face. Andrew seemed to notice as well, and they both made a motion to step toward the two men but caught themselves at the last second, exchanging a sheepish grin and shrugging it off. Kurt would get the story later, he thought, and with Blaine and Toby taking up the dance again after a moment, it was easy to do the same.

“Answer me one thing,” Andrew said. “Was it a mistake?”

Kurt bit his lip, considering the question. Maybe it was being surrounded by so much happiness and love; maybe it was the image of his parents—so clearly meant to be—dancing in the faded light; maybe it was even the burn of Blaine’s gaze from across the room… Whatever it was, it immediately made Kurt want to say, _No. It’s not a mistake—how could it be when it feels so right, when it feels like I’ve been waiting for this my entire life? And then on the other hand, how could it_ not _be a mistake? We can’t be meant for one another when I’ve fallen in love alone, when we’re supposed to be infinite but instead the end is already in sight._

“I thought it was, at first,” he finally answered.

Andrew nodded, seemingly satisfied, and Kurt let himself relax into the final few bars of the song. It ended soon after, Andrew thanking him for the dance and leaving him with a smile to take the hand of Toby’s sister just as she was trying to leave the floor. Toby himself was standing with Blaine in the corner closest to the speakers, one hand on Blaine’s shoulder. It reminded Kurt of when Blaine had still wanted to follow in Cooper’s steps and pursue acting, and Cooper would give him advice on how to impress directors and work with co-stars.

Blaine had won their two-person betting pool on how long Cooper’s acting career would last.

When Blaine found him a few minutes later, Kurt was admiring the table of wedding favors—packages of green apples, homemade caramels, and hot apple cider mix, all wrapped in plastic and tied up with twine.

“So what other dances do you know?” he asked, nudging Blaine’s shoulder in an effort to distract himself from just how good Blaine looked with his tie loose and sleeves rolled to the elbow. “I’d bet good money that you didn’t just stop at ballroom dancing. Maybe salsa? Latin? _Line-dance?”_

Blaine paused for a moment, looking as if he wanted to talk about something else but ultimately thinking better of it. “I know the tango,” he said, fiddling with one of the favors.

“You know the tango,” Kurt scoffed. “Sweet, naïve, awkward, fifteen-year-old Blaine learned the tango? I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Blaine countered, drawing himself up and grabbing Kurt’s hand to drag him back onto the floor just as The Cardigans’ _[Erase/Rewind](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/58636524188)_ began pouring from the speakers.

“You want to tango with me to _this?”_ Kurt asked.

“Try to keep up, sweetheart,” Blaine quipped.

“I know how to tango,” Kurt huffed.

“Not like this, you don’t,” Blaine told him, pulling Kurt into their opening position. It was a close embrace—a striking difference from what he’d learned in his dance elective. He was used to arching his upper body away from his dance partner while maintaining contact at the hip, but Blaine had the position almost in reverse, their chests flush and heads close. Seeming to notice Kurt’s trepidation, Blaine said, “You learned the ballroom tango, if I remember correctly. But this is the Argentine.”

And with that, the dance began.

Kurt quickly picked up that the Argentine tango didn’t have any basic step. It was an almost completely improvised dance that relied on the follower picking up the lead’s unspoken cues. Blaine gently guided him through a basic _sistema cruzado,_ and although the dance concept felt foreign to him after learning the fundamental choreography, Kurt found that it was easy to follow the cues of Blaine’s movement. His was a body that Kurt knew, arms that felt so right around him that he wondered again how he could possibly be wrong.

 _But I was wrong before, even when it felt right,_ he thought, improvising off the back of a sudden rush of flirtatious courage and hooking his foot around Blaine’s calf, dragging it upward. He leaned back, positioning himself into a controlled drop; Blaine led them backward for four steps in time with the beat, and as the song swung down into its chorus, Kurt straightened and took the lead in order to surprise Blaine with a dip of his own.

With Blaine’s hazel eyes shining in the light, his chest heaving and limbs pliable, Kurt suddenly understood—like he never had with his other partners during dance class—why they described the tango as an overtly sexual dance.

They continued at a comfortable pace but grew in speed and complexity, and Kurt noticed that more and more guests were moving off the floor to form a large circle around them. He felt momentarily embarrassed that they were stealing the focus, but they couldn’t very well stop now. Imbued with the same alien confidence he’d found on stage in Ann Arbor, Kurt showed off by embellishing a _pasada_ onto the end of their promenade.

“I’m impressed,” Blaine said, smiling when they went back into a sweetheart walk just before the final chorus.

“Told you I could keep up,” Kurt replied, feeling pleased with himself.

“I never really doubted you,” Blaine said, glancing at their audience and leaning close to whisper, “I’ve always thought that this dance is a little like sex, and we both know you’re okay at that.”

“Just okay, huh?”

“Well, you know what they say…”

“Practice makes perfect?” Kurt supplied, before fixing Blaine with a mock-glare and reminding him, “This coming from the guy who was practically celibate?”

“Well, you can’t deny that I’m a fast learner,” Blaine said with an almost imperceptible wink. Kurt laughed as Blaine pulled him close again, throwing a few spins into their steps to give their impromptu audience something to watch. Echoing Kurt’s own sentiments from the bowling alley in Minneapolis, he said in a low voice, “I’ve missed us like _this.”_

“Stealing the show?” Kurt bantered.

“You know—“

“—what you mean; of course I do.”

Blaine took a breath, his hands flat against Kurt’s shoulder blades with their dance almost lost, and whispered, “I wish…”

“You wish what?” Kurt prompted, leading him through a series of crossing, pivoting steps with their chests pressed tightly together and heads held high. When he didn’t answer, Kurt pressed his forehead to Blaine’s temple and whispered, “Tell me.”

“I wish I’d told you about the dancing sooner,” Blaine said on an exhale, and nodded to their rapt audience.

“That’s all?” Kurt couldn’t help but ask. When had he stopped biting his tongue?

“That’s all,” Blaine confirmed, and Kurt’s attention on their conversation was lost as Blaine took the lead once more; he bent Kurt back in one final dip to end their performance. The applause was enthusiastic, and in his periphery, Kurt could see Toby and Andrew’s matching, infuriatingly knowing smiles.

And when he looked back up, Blaine was gazing down at him with eyes that reminded him of…

Of harbor lights, guiding him home long after nightfall.

 

**Distance: 6,451 miles**

*

**Day 056: Sunday 11th November, 2012  
Slow Fix (Missouri)**

_“What about_ Winter’s Bone? _Have you seen it yet?”_

_“No, I was on deadline from Dmitri the night everyone went out to see it.”_

_“Alright, so_ Winter’s Bone _for Missouri. Onto Arkansas…”_

 

It was only when the nights’ shadows began to extend that Blaine even realized they had gone beyond the halfway point.

The sun was rising later and going to bed earlier, and he and Kurt were both getting used to long stretches of dark drive time, keeping the lights dimmed in the R.V. after sunset, and leaving a pot of coffee brewing almost around the clock. Blaine’s mood, however, was still bright—brighter even than when Kurt had finally given in and kissed him that first time, his lips salted by the ocean air.

So much was changing. So much had _already_ changed. But Blaine found that rather than chasing down the new until he could hold it between his cupped palms, turn it this way and that, for once he was content to pick it up only when it had almost passed by without notice.

“What are you waiting for?” Toby had asked during their dance at the wedding. It was a question seemingly out of the blue until he’d continued, “I see what you guys are trying to do, and I respect that, but seriously, what you have is too special to just piss away like this. So what are you waiting for?”

Blaine had stepped back, needing to feel for a second that he could still bolt if he wanted to, but instead he had composed himself, taken up the dance once more, and simply answered, “Him. I’m waiting for him.”

He glanced over to Kurt, sleeping in the passenger seat, and smiled to himself. He’d been driving for hours; his entire body was stiff, and his eyes felt dry and raw, but there was a pleasant sensation growing in the back of his mind. It felt like the slow awakening of a creature in hibernation, yet something about the approaching cold was drawing it out rather than sending it into a deeper sleep. Blaine didn’t know what it was, and usually the not knowing would be driving him to distraction, but not this time.

Kurt jerked himself awake in the passenger seat, his body going rigid and his hand flattening against the window. Blaine winced in sympathy as Kurt rubbed at his eyes and relaxed back into his seat with a shuddering sigh.

“Bad dream?” he asked.

“It was like—“ Kurt began in a sleep-choked rasp, stopping to clear his throat, “It was like some weird version of _The Hunger Games_ but with congressmen. You were there. And there was _so much blood.”_

“Ugh,” Blaine replied. He suppressed a shiver and turned his attention to the GPS. “Well, we’re almost there.”

Kurt grabbed the GPS from its holder, studying it intently for a moment before programming something new into it. When he returned it to the dashboard, the Kathy Bates sound-alike they still hadn’t bothered changing instructed him, _“In half a mile, turn left onto Legion Road.”_

“You’ll see,” Kurt said in answer to Blaine’s questioning look.

When they pulled up outside The Dam Bait Shop, the headlights cast the faded wooden storefront in a harsh shade of yellow. Blaine glanced at Kurt sidelong, and asked, “Are you sure this is where we’re meant to be?”

“Yes,” Kurt answered, offering no further explanation.

“But it’s a bait shop.”

“Yes, Captain Obvious, it’s a bait shop.”

“So… What are we doing here? Are you taking me on a romantic fishing adventure?” Blaine asked, grasping at straws.

“There’s no such thing as a romantic fishing adventure, B,” Kurt replied with a sigh. Turning in his seat, he gestured toward the bait shop and finally explained, “This is where Dad took me when I was eight. After Mom.”

“Is that why you wanted to come here instead of Joplin?” Blaine asked gently, reaching over to intertwine their fingers.

Kurt looked at their joined hands, the corners of his mouth turning downward, and glanced once again out of the windshield, his brow furrowed. “Let’s go,” he said, exhaling and giving Blaine’s hand a single, light squeeze.

They drove on quietly, Blaine merging back onto US-54 and pulling into River View R.V. Park ten minutes later. The night was quiet, the air fresh and a little damp from that afternoon’s thunderstorm. While Kurt stayed still in the passenger seat, looking quite lost in his own thoughts, Blaine made quick work of getting them signed in and around to their parking spot.

After retrieving two blankets from the hall closet, Blaine shrugged into his thick Bowdoin hoodie and grabbed Kurt’s sweater from the back of the couch. Kurt was in the process of stretching out his arms and legs when Blaine approached him, and as he took in the blankets, raised an eyebrow at him in question.

“Grab your iPod and meet me on the roof,” Blaine said, shoving the sweater into Kurt’s hands and turning on his heel to go outside.

“The roof?” he heard Kurt ask, but the door closed behind him with a deep click before he could answer. Instead, he made his way to the back of the R.V., tossed the blankets over his shoulder, and climbed the ladder. The metal was cold under his hands, and the night carried with it a chill breeze that made him grateful for the hoodie.

He spread out one of the blankets and sat down, only having to wait thirty seconds or so before he heard Kurt gasping in the sudden cold. Blaine grinned down at him from his vantage point.

“Are you crazy?” Kurt grumbled, craning his neck back. “It’s fucking freezing.”

“The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,” Blaine challenged him, remembering childhood nights where it had been all he could do to get Kurt into Cooper’s long abandoned tree house.

In the little slices of moonlight cutting through the clouds overhead, Blaine could see Kurt working his jaw for a moment before he made his way around to the ladder and responded, “Stony limits cannot hold me out.” When Kurt had climbed high enough on the ladder to be able to see over the top of the R.V., he grabbed Blaine’s wrist, pulled Blaine towards him and whispered against his lips, “Nor dorks like you, apparently.”

Something twisted and swooped in Blaine’s gut as he kissed Kurt, parting his lips and tasting peppermint. It sometimes happened at the oddest of moments, this sensation of being suspended, weightless and timeless in a world grown quiet save for their breathing and matching heartbeats. When he pulled back, he could see faint tremors in the cotton of Kurt’s fitted t-shirt that belied the racing beneath.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Blaine said, scooting back to make room.

With a grace in his long limbs that Blaine often envied, Kurt pulled himself up onto the roof and arranged himself to sit between Blaine’s legs, back pressing comfortably against his chest. Blaine shook out the second blanket and wrapped it around them both, his breath coming out in barely visible puffs of white.

“So are you going to tell me what we’re doing up here?” Kurt asked.

Blaine didn’t answer for a moment. He took the iPod from Kurt and, as he scrolled through the extensive library, countered, “Are you going to tell me what’s up?”

Just as Blaine found the song he was looking for—[ _Swingset Chain_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/58636639123) by Loquat, a mellow track that had been a staple of theirs for years—Kurt exhaled heavily. He pulled Blaine’s arms snug around his waist and shrugged a little. “Just a few more ghosts to exorcise,” he said, and dropped his head back onto Blaine’s shoulder. Blaine paused in his scrolling. “Do you remember when Dad came and got me that April in 1999?”

“When you’d been staying at my place?” At Kurt’s nod, Blaine added, “Of course I remember.”

“Well, this is where he brought me. Lake Ozark,” Kurt said. “The drive down was so… I was so _pissed off_ at him for leaving me for three months and then just coming to get me like I’d been at your house for a sleepover or something. I barely spoke to him. Until we got to that stupid bait shop.

“We were looking at the fishing poles, and he was talking to me about them, you know, telling me which ones were better. And then he just looked down at me and asked me, ‘So which one do you want, kiddo?’ And suddenly it was like, ‘Oh. I still actually have my Dad. I didn’t lose him _and_ Mom.’”

“You came back different,” Blaine said quietly, pressing his lips to the hollow of Kurt’s neck.

“It was the first time in three months that I didn’t feel like I’d lost everyone,” he said quietly.

“You always had me,” Blaine said, rocking him from side to side.

“You with your Band-Aids,” Kurt reminded him, elbow gently nudging his stomach.

With an almost startling clarity, the image of an eight-year-old Kurt screaming at the sky rose in his mind’s eye. When Burt had given him the news about his mother, Kurt had bolted from the house, Blaine at his heels because he’d known exactly what Kurt had been thinking: Simba’s dad talked to him from up in the sky, so Kurt’s mommy would too, right?

“Why isn't she up there, Blaine?” Kurt had demanded, but there had been nothing that Blaine could think of to say. What _could_ he have said that would have made it all better? It wasn’t like that time Kurt fell off his bike in the front yard and his knee got all bloody. There was nothing to clean up or put one of Cooper's cool dinosaur Band-Aids over.

The first time Blaine saw Kurt again after the funeral, however, he’d taken one of those Band-Aids and stuck it onto Kurt’s shirt, right over his heart. Even when Cooper yelled at him for stealing his Band-Aids, he’d carried on doing it every time Kurt got sad until they were at least thirteen.

“Why did you stop doing that, by the way?” Kurt asked curiously. “It always cheered me up, no matter how crappy I felt.”

“Are you feeling crappy right now? Because we have Band-Aids, you know. They’re just the regular kind, but—“

Kurt twisted around and kissed him firmly. His eyes sparkled in the moonlight when he pulled back. “No. Right now, I’m happy.”

Blaine wanted to ask, _Is it because of me? Are you happy with me, would you let me keep making you happy? Would you trust me with your heart if I promise that you can?_

Instead, he shrugged it off and told him, “Me too.”

“Good,” Kurt said. “So what _are_ we doing up here?”

“We’re going to listen to a little music,” Blaine began. “We’re going to huddle for warmth like penguins, and then we’re going to make hot chocolate because I don’t know about you, but I’m completely over coffee. And then maybe we could watch our movie. Or we could have sex. Your choice.”

Kurt laughed; the sound was melodic yet too loud in the stillness of the night. “Is ‘all of the above’ an option?”

“Always. Why? Do you want to go inside now?”

Kurt took a deep breath and settled back against him, tugging the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands. “Maybe in a little bit. It’s nice up here.”

“I do have good ideas sometimes,” Blaine quipped.

“Those Band-Aids were one of the best ideas you ever had, you know,” Kurt murmured.

“I wanted to take care of you.”

“You always have.”

Blaine smiled and thought to himself, _I always will._ He tensed for a second upon catching the thought, but let go as it washed him in warmth. He couldn’t quite puzzle out whether the initial tension each time he had such a thought was the remnant of a lifelong habit or a warning sign.

Either way, it was something to which he was no longer paying attention. All that mattered was the man in his arms who, for the first time ever, giggled and joined him in singing the line, _“I’m kind of afraid I’m codependent on you.”_

 

**Distance: 6,794 miles**

*

**Day 059: Wednesday 14th November, 2012  
Total Recall (Arkansas)**

_“Onto Arkansas…”_

_“You already know exactly what we’re watching:_ Walk The Line.”

_“Well, of course.”_

 

“Just got a text from April,” Blaine murmured from the passenger seat. “She wants to know what songs we want to do solo for the gig this Saturday.”

“Must be the text I just got, too,” Kurt replied, having felt his phone vibrate against his leg a moment earlier. “What did you choose?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Has she sent over those two new ones yet?”

Blaine nodded, presumably tapping out a response. “Yeah, I just got the email. How crazy is it that they’re writing their own stuff now?”

“Well, it’s only the one she wants to close the show with,” Kurt corrected him. “The opener’s a We Are Scientists song. But yeah, it’s crazy. They’ve never been serious like this before. In fact…”

“What?” Blaine prompted.

Scratching absently at his jaw, Kurt considered his words for a moment. “When we talked yesterday, April kept talking about Alaska being the last big show, and then she was saying that not everyone in the band was joining in on writing the new material. Ever since Will had to quit for good… I don’t know, it just… It got me thinking.”

“Thinking what?”

“I think they might be breaking up after this tour. Or like, if they’re not breaking up then a few of them are starting a new band,” Kurt said. He sat forward in his seat, resting his forearms on the steering wheel, and as he glanced out of the windshield and caught sight of the blue and white sign declaring, _Welcome to Arkansas, The Natural State,_ he said, “Alright, we’re in Arkansas. Johnny Cash, and crank it.”

In his periphery he caught Blaine’s affectionate smile, and within moments, [_Folsom Prison Blues_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/58636856870) was pouring from the speakers. Blaine tapped his thumb and drummed his fingers against his thigh, singing along quietly and harmonizing to Johnny’s timeless vocals.

“Why didn’t you go into music?” Kurt asked as the thought occurred to him, lowering the volume so that he didn’t have to raise his voice.

Blaine looked thoughtful for a moment, and then replied, “A lot of reasons. I mean, you know I love film and directing.”

“Right, but you love music just as much, if not more. And you’re just as good at that.”

“I don’t know, I guess… It was Dad’s thing, you know? I kind of wanted to distance myself from all that, not to mention that you were doing film, too.”

“Don’t tell me you did film just because I was doing it,” Kurt said, shooting him a look.

“Narcissist,” Blaine teased; Kurt stuck out his tongue in response. “If I’m honest, it was one reason. Just not the whole reason.”

Kurt nodded, mostly to himself. They lapsed into silence, and after a few moments Kurt turned the volume back up, unsure what to do with this new piece of information. He was beginning to feel like both he and Blaine were oddly displaced in their own lives, like they were caught between two distinct phases: the first having ended the day they left Maine, and the second not yet begun.

He still saw the signs pointing toward his career as a director of photography, but he was beginning to think that Blaine was approaching a crossroads. It had been a subtle and gradual shift, so much so that Kurt was only just starting to notice the change, but no longer was Blaine discussing their movies with his usual passionate and analytical fervor. Instead, he was tending to focus on the sound and music, picking out pieces of the score that struck him either as particularly fitting or at odds with the scene.

“I think my arm is getting sunburned,” he murmured absently, suddenly noticing that the skin of his left arm was feeling tight.

Blaine glanced over at him and grimaced sympathetically, just as the song switched over to _[I Walk The Line](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/58637056883)._ “Do you want me to take over in a little bit?”

“Maybe,” Kurt replied. “Hey, do you remember that time I got sunburned at Hampton Beach and you ended up icing my legs for me?”

“I still don’t get how you can burn through SPF 70 in an hour,” Blaine replied, shifting in his seat to turn and face him.

“It’s called being pale,” Kurt being told him. “We can’t all have beautiful olive skin that doesn’t even know what a sunburn is.”

“Beautiful, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“No, really, tell me more,” Blaine said, crossing his arms and propping his chin in his hand.

Kurt remained silent—usually, this was territory that certainly warranted exploration, but while driving, was decidedly perilous.

At length, Blaine continued, “Because you know… ‘Beautiful’ is probably how I’d describe your skin, too.”

Kurt scoffed at that, and yet in the pause that followed—knowing that he was taking the bait, but quite unable to resist—he asked, “Since when?”

“Oh, since… Alabama, maybe? Is that where we were when I gave you that massage?”

“I think so.”

“Well, either way, since then,” Blaine said, waving his hand dismissively. “Let’s just say I was really glad when you said you didn’t want it to be a one-time thing.”

“You were, huh?”

“Yep. I mean, I wouldn’t have gotten to figure out all these things about you.”

“What things?” Kurt asked, wanting to punch himself as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“Oh, I don’t know…” Blaine trailed off, stretching his arms up over his head. He seemed to consider his words, and Kurt licked his lips with a dry tongue. “That tongue, for instance. I mean, I’d never have known you can do more with it than just tying knots in cherry stems.

“And we probably shouldn’t talk about exactly _what_ you do with it,” Blaine continued, his voice hushed, like he was speaking in riddles and prayers. “We probably also shouldn’t talk about how badly I’ve been wanting you to drive off the road for the last hundred miles so I can drag you back to bed.”

“You wouldn’t exactly have to drag me,” Kurt said, lightly gritting his teeth and tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

Blaine chuckled to himself, low and dirty, and turned his gaze out of the window. But the seed was planted in Kurt’s mind, and while they drove on with only his Johnny Cash playlist and the rhythmic hum of asphalt to soundtrack their progress, his thoughts drifted.

Growing up, Kurt had always felt like he’d seen the world through a different set of eyes to everyone else. He seemed to pick out the tiniest details and take photographs to remember them by: the single droplet of water left on a window long after the rain had passed; the almost invisible, hairline crack in a cup from his mother’s tea set; the drooping end of the tinsel string where, try as he might, he couldn’t prop it up on a branch.

Yet Blaine was different. With him, the photographs Kurt took were far more sensory: the curve of his cheekbone under Kurt’s thumb; the softness of the skin behind his knee; the taste of his lips in the last seconds before falling asleep. They were the most precious pictures he’d ever taken.

They were also all tied up with the panorama shots: Blaine dancing under pulsing lights, the only enticing thing in a sea of what _should_ have been enticing; Blaine splayed out and spent, a sheen of sweat covering his back after his third orgasm; Blaine waking up with pupils already blown wide and pulling Kurt on top of him for lazy morning sex somewhere in the middle of Kentucky.

By the time an hour had passed, Kurt was uncomfortably hard in his jeans; he couldn’t focus on any of Blaine’s comments about Arkansas being Walmart country or that Hot Springs supposedly had its own red-light district. Instead, he was focusing on the little things again, the lips and eyes and hands that knew exactly how to undo him, and he felt frenzied and desperate with craving.

His frustration hit its peak when Blaine glanced over and, upon noticing Kurt’s predicament, did nothing more than toss him a knowing smirk. It was the moment when Kurt finally decided to act on his instincts and drive them off the freeway, following the signs for Buffalo River National Park and barely keeping to the speed limit.

He was winding, tighter and tighter, until they were finally parked and he was able to grab Blaine by the wrist, yank him upright, and lead him to the bedroom without so much as a word passing between them.

Almost parodying their night in Philadelphia, a hazy picture in his mind that blurred around the edges, Kurt pushed Blaine down onto the edge of the bed and leaned over him.

“What do you want?” Blaine asked.

“This,” Kurt said, gesturing down to himself, “is your fault. So I want you to shut up.”

“Shut up and… What? Just take it?” Blaine clarified, and when Kurt nodded, his eyes grew dark with the edge of a challenge. He smirked again, lifted his chin, and said, “Make me.”

Kurt let out a noise somewhere between a growl and a groan, pitching forward and kissing him with no finesse whatsoever; sloppy tongue and lazy lips. Even as Blaine struggled against Kurt’s grip around his wrists, he hooked his legs around Kurt’s waist to pull him closer; Blaine was still daring him to chase, challenging him to deliver and betting that he wouldn’t, like the world’s most willing game of cat and mouse.

With only a few breaks in contact, reluctant to give up a single second of the release he’d been craving, Kurt managed to strip them both entirely naked. As he settled his body over Blaine’s, teeth raking the skin of his neck, there was a fleeting moment where he felt Blaine’s limbs go intoxicatingly lax and it almost made him want to stop, catch his breath, and make this last.

Kurt pulled back to drink him in, resting his crossed forearms across Blaine’s chest and letting them bear his weight. Blaine strained against his arms, raising his head off the sheets just far enough to whisper against his lips, “Do something useful.”

And with that, the moment passed as quickly as it had come, swept away by the heat and the fire that boiled Kurt’s blood.

 _“Useful?”_ he managed, mock-offended and screwing his eyes shut as his Blaine dragged his cock along the length of Kurt’s own; an appetizer when he wanted a five-course meal. He dragged Blaine further up the bed, straddling his hips and holding him down with one hand. “Fuck you, Blaine Anderson.”

“Go right ahead,” Blaine shot back, not missing a beat. His grin was roguish, defying Kurt to resist, and Kurt had had just about enough.

“You know what? I told you to shut up.”

“And I told you to make me. But if you’re not _up_ to it—“

Quickly yet deliberately, Kurt put his hand over Blaine’s mouth, locking eyes with him as he moved to straddle his chest. There he waited until Blaine blinked up at him with wide, humored eyes and nodded. He worked the tip of his index finger between Blaine’s lips and tugged his mouth open, holding himself just out of reach and reveling in the heat of Blaine’s bare chest against the skin of his thighs.

When Blaine leaned up far enough to lick across the head of his cock, it was like relief being painted onto his skin, second by exquisite second. Blaine sank his mouth over the tip and sucked hard, eyes fluttering shut and a moan vibrating through Kurt’s sensitive flesh and up, up, up, a puddle of warm tingle in the pit of his stomach.

Kurt’s breath stuttered and hitched in his chest when Blaine slowly pulled off with a light, almost tentative rake of teeth along his shaft before going back to working him over at an agonizing pace that was nowhere near close to enough. He began working his hips back and forth, tangling his fingers between Blaine’s curls and pumping his cock between Blaine’s stretched lips; he spiraled into the sensation of tight, wet warmth around him, driven further lost with each snap forward.

He finally pulled back when his thighs began to shake underneath him, his breathing labored and ragged. Blaine looked up at him with a smug expression as he licked around his lips.

“I hate you,” Kurt got out on a ragged exhale, but he couldn’t help the smile tugging at his mouth.

“Evidently,” Blaine agreed, schooling his features into a knowing, mock-sympathetic expression. “Why’d you stop?”

Kurt moved backward far enough to free Blaine’s arms, only to grab his wrists, pin them either side of his head, and fix him with a look. “Because I’m not letting you off the hook _that_ easily.”

“Oh, so you were about to come?” Blaine teased.

Kurt shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? You need to _stop talking.”_

With that, he climbed completely off of Blaine and flipped him onto his front, holding him there with one hand on his back while he palmed a condom and their three-quarters empty bottle of lube from the nightstand. Blaine’s muscles shifted beneath his overheated skin and, after rolling the condom onto himself and slicking himself up, Kurt couldn’t help but scratch his fingernails along Blaine’s spine, leaving bright red trails in his wake.

“You don’t need to—“

“I know,” Kurt interrupted firmly, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to his shoulder as he leaned over Blaine and wound his hand back into his tight curls, damp with sweat at the nape of his neck. He nudged Blaine’s legs apart and pressed in slowly to start; Blaine let out a stuttering breath that sounded like a long-awaited release.

Kurt knew Blaine’s body well, how much he could take, how far he could push—these were the secret parts of him that Blaine had allowed him to learn, had given freely even though it was probably far more than Kurt deserved. But being wrapped in such velvet heat expelled all such thoughts from his mind as he drove into Blaine over and over, hands holding him down by his head and his shoulder—Blaine took it all so beautifully, muscles contracting and loosening beneath Kurt’s grip and breathy moans leaving him in punches.

“I… Fuck—harder, _please…”_ Blaine begged, the words a broken whine that settled determinedly at the base of Kurt’s spine, the little bundle of nerves there firing sparks through his every cell. Kurt bit his lip against a loud moan; he was losing control at a rapidly accelerating rate, and wouldn’t be able to hold onto himself much longer.

Instead he held onto Blaine, hooking his hand underneath Blaine’s arm and up over his shoulder, the skin turning white where his fingers pressed into his flesh.

“Kurt, please, _please—“_

He covered Blaine’s mouth with his left hand, unable to take any more. Blaine was—undone, so utterly undone that it only spurred Kurt on, faster and faster until his hips were jerking forward of their own volition and he had to press his forehead to Blaine’s temple just to block out the look in Blaine’s eyes: open and vulnerable and brimming full of something that couldn’t possibly be.

Blaine bit down on Kurt’s third finger as he came, tensing and clenching around him, and it was that shock of pain that pushed Kurt over the edge, a base and debauched grunt the only sound that left his mouth as his body burst outward and back in on itself.

With the little strength he had left, he managed to carefully untangle himself from Blaine, peel off the condom, and collapse onto the cool and welcoming sheets.

“Old man,” Blaine whispered into his ear, the mattress sinking beneath his weight as he lay down next to Kurt and drew circles on his upturned palm.

“There’s only a hundred days between us, lest you forget,” Kurt reminded him. “I can still kick your ass.”

“I think you pretty much just did,” Blaine said, chuckling mostly to himself. A comfortable quiet fell, the only sounds those of their matching, labored breaths as they both regained their equilibrium. Kurt could just feel Blaine’s fingertips tracing patterns on the skin of his back; it was the ghost of a touch, but still there. “Your freckles are fading.”

“Hmm?”

“I said your freckles are fading.”

“Good,” Kurt grumbled. “I hate them.”

“I bet I could make you like them,” Blaine countered.

“Remind me that we don’t need to buy any more coffee for you,” Kurt said absently.

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s buzzed _after_ an orgasm and it makes me hate you a little bit so you neither need nor deserve coffee,” he rambled, not caring whether or not he was making sense when his entire body felt at once leaden and floating.

Blaine chuckled, and Kurt heard him fumbling through one of the drawers in his nightstand for a moment before letting out a triumphant, “Ha!” and moving across the bed to straddle Kurt’s waist. He winced a little at the jolt of sensitivity, and soon he began to feel a tickling drag across his back.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Making music,” Blaine answered vaguely.

“Wait, are you—are you _drawing_ on me?”

“Shh. I’m in my creative space right now.”

 _“Such_ a dork,” Kurt muttered, but pillowed his arms on his head and let his eyes slip closed—Blaine wouldn’t be dissuaded when he was in this sort of a mood, and Kurt didn’t have the strength anyway. Instead, he imagined himself looking down on them from above: Blaine bent over him, picking out melodies on wavering staffs and covering Kurt’s skin with quavers and crotchets and treble clefs until he felt like he was made of Blaine’s music.

 _Could you capture me in four minutes?_ Kurt wondered, idly feeling himself drifting toward sleep. _Ten? Five hundred, twenty-five thousand? Would you have me for that long? Longer?_

He came around some time later, fuzzy-eyed and cotton-mouthed, cheek pressed against Blaine’s chest. He could hear Blaine’s heartbeat, a steady _thump-thump_ in his ear, and when he looked up, he saw a soft smile playing about Blaine’s lips. He’d pulled the laptop onto the foot of the bed where it rested, VLC Player open and _Walk The Line_ paused at the very beginning of its opening scene.

“What are you so happy about?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes.

“I just love movies like this. I mean, I know the story’s been changed and exaggerated in places, but still… We’re watching _history,”_ Blaine said, picking at a loose thread on the comforter. “What if… What if you met your soul mate but you were already with someone, like Johnny and June? Is there anything sadder? Someone’s heart’s going to get broken whatever you do.”

Kurt swallowed thickly, hearing that line from the movie playing in his head, and somewhere in that dark corner of his mind, he knew what Blaine was _really_ asking. It was what they did in this boundary-pushing pas de deux of theirs. But Kurt couldn’t say it, couldn’t offer up his bleeding heart and ask Blaine to tell him he didn’t love him, like he was the June to Kurt’s Johnny.

“It’s sad,” he agreed. “But everything worked out for the best, in the end.”

“Right,” Blaine replied obliquely, and gestured toward the laptop. “Shall we?”

Kurt nodded, and reached out his foot to tap the space bar, shaking off Blaine’s words. They’d decided to be happy with this—they’d made a deal, and Kurt intended to hold up his end. Whether it was enough was a question to which he didn’t need the answer, because…

Because being cradled against Blaine’s chest, wrapped up in his black-magic words and red velvet heart with the afternoon light fading into dusk, Kurt felt as complete as he could ever imagine feeling.

And that was already enough.

 

**Distance: 7,144 miles**


	7. Chapter 7

**Day 060: Thursday 15th November, 2012  
Redamancy (Louisiana)**

_“Who knew so much was shot in Louisiana?”_

_“Well, it kind of has to be_ Benjamin Button, _right?”_

_“Yeah, I think it has to be.”_

 

“Okay,” Blaine said, setting everything down onto the blanket and sitting back. “We have beignets, we have hot cider, and we have… About fifteen minutes before we should be able to start seeing them.”

 _“Merci beaucoup,”_ Kurt replied, his diction barely flawed, and accepted the small cup of cider that Blaine poured for him. Kurt’s eyes remained on him as he took a sip, tipping his head back a little to expose the long column of his neck and the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.

Blaine licked his lips, and chose to busy himself with transferring their beignets to paper plates. There was a pleasant fizzle of anticipation simmering away beneath his skin; all day, Kurt had been throwing every single trick he possessed at him, almost like he was still trying to pay him back for Arkansas.

Which had been unintentional. Mostly.

“We should come back here one day for Mardi Gras,” Kurt mused absently, taking a bite out of a beignet and glancing up at the sky. Save for a few clouds lingering in the distance, it was a crystal clear night—perfect for watching the Leonids as they skittered through the stars.

They weren’t the only ones sitting on the roof of an R.V.—it seemed like almost everyone in the Pontchartrain Landing Park was out tonight. Their sites all in a line overlooking the marina, the other campers were gathered in couples and groups, laughing and eating and listening to music.

“Is this a thing people do in Louisiana?” Blaine had wondered aloud, just after sunset when he and Kurt had parked in their reserved site, bellies full of creole jambalaya and crawfish étouffée from the French Quarter. People were already up on top of their vehicles and singing raucously along to someone’s iPod playing [the _True Blood_ theme](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/59366755446). Kurt had taken it in with a barely-concealed sigh, and rolled his eyes when Blaine had joined in.

Then they’d both heard mention of a meteor shower, and suddenly everything had made sense.

“Wow,” Blaine said after taking a sip of his own cider. “Can you get the recipe for this from Toby?”

“I think it’s his mom’s recipe, but I can ask,” Kurt said. “It’s pretty special, right?”

“Let’s just say, I’m glad we got extra,” Blaine murmured, and reached out to thumb away a few specks of powdered sugar at the corner of Kurt’s mouth. Eyes lingering on Kurt’s, he sucked on the tip of his thumb.

“What are you doing?” Kurt asked on an exhale. He wrapped both hands around his cup and linked his fingers together.

“Exactly what you’ve been doing all day,” Blaine shot back with a grin, just as the group of girls three vehicles away starting playing _Bad Things_ for the third time that hour.

“Oh my god,” Kurt muttered under his breath.

“Good news,” Blaine said, reaching into the pocket of his hoodie and producing his iPod. He offered Kurt one of the ear buds. “We also have music.”

“You’re my favorite,” Kurt announced, and Blaine smiled as he scrolled through his playlists, hitting shuffle on the one titled, ‘Mellow Magic.’

“Lie down,” he said, INU’s [_Captured_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/59367034531) weaving its quietly building introduction around the moment. With a little maneuvering, they managed to arrange themselves so that they were lying on their backs, legs stretched out in opposite directions and heads pillowed on each other’s shoulders as they looked up at the sky and waited for the show to begin.

At least, Kurt was looking up. Blaine’s head was tilted half toward Kurt’s, taking in the silhouette of his profile. The scent of his cologne was still lingering faintly around the collar of his shirt and it coiled into Blaine’s senses, wrapping him up in a phantom of home.

They had been on the road for two months already, with less than seven weeks left to go. Blaine could almost hear the clock _tick-tick-ticking_ their seconds away, and he wanted more than anything for their road trip to go on far longer than another forty days if it meant that they still got to be caught in this snow globe that they themselves shook, over and over and over until the slant of the land sent them sliding all too closely to the truth: this wasn’t just a road trip thing.

But the boundaries were set, and so Blaine committed himself to taking in as much as possible.

“You’re going to miss it if you keep staring at me like that,” Kurt said, shifting onto his side and propping himself up on one elbow. “What’s got you so preoccupied?”

“Do you remember that night you got your license and we drove out to Coffin Pond?” Blaine asked after a moment.

“Yeah…”

“And we saw the SWAN comet and named your car?”

“Odette! I miss that car,” Kurt said wistfully, before asking, “What about it?”

“We’ve got less than seven weeks left,” Blaine said, pausing to clear his throat. “Don’t you think it’s time we named the R.V.?”

Kurt hummed a little, reached up to scratch at the side of his jaw, and said, “I propose ‘Leona.’”

“Leona?”

“Odette for the SWAN, Leona for the Leonids,” he clarified.

“Leona,” Blaine repeated, rolling it around in his mouth as he shifted to mirror Kurt’s position.

“Do you think your grandfather would have liked it?” Kurt asked quietly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” Blaine said, all wistful melancholy. “Leona it is.”

“You’re going to make this a thing, aren’t you,” Kurt grumbled with a long-suffering air. “Do I have to go get that bottle of champagne and smash it on the side?”

Blaine let out a bark of laughter and, location and surroundings be damned, leaned forward to press his lips to Kurt’s.

“Blaine,” Kurt sighed into his mouth, his hand cupping Blaine’s jaw so firmly that he didn’t know whether Kurt was pulling him closer or pushing him away. Eventually his patience won out; Kurt dropped his elbow and gave in with the softest of moans. The angle was awkward but Blaine made it work, shifting so that he could part Kurt’s lips and dip his tongue inside. He tasted like cider and sugar.

 _Tick-tick-tock,_ he thought. _Down counts the clock._

Loud cheers startled them apart, and Blaine immediately looked up to see the first of the night’s meteors streaking across the sky; they looked like shooting stars, but had no wishes to grant. What would he wish for, even if they did? More time, of course, but that was a given. Or perhaps… Perhaps it wouldn’t be for more time—perhaps instead, he would wish to _stop_ time, right here and now, so that he could live suspended in this moment until he could say, “Take me to the next place, and the next, and I’ll go wherever you want me to follow as long as my heart is in your hand and your hand is in mine.”

“Do you ever wish you could stop time?” Kurt whispered.

Glancing down at him, Blaine replied, “Mind reader.”

“One of my many talents.”

“If you could freeze frame any moment from your life, what would it be?”

Kurt considered the question for a long moment, and then said, “This one’s up there, but… I think I’d have to go with performing in Ann Arbor. I could live in that one ‘til I’m old and gray.”

“You’ll never be old, Kurt,” Blaine assured him, trying not to feel disappointed that Kurt hadn’t picked a moment featuring him.

“What, you think I plan on dying young? I have _way_ too much visual magic to work in my lifetime, thank you very much,” Kurt said primly, and looped his arm around Blaine’s neck. “Will you still be there, Band-Aids and all?”

“What do you mean?”

“When I’m old. Will you still take care of me, like Daisy took care of Benjamin?”

“Well, I'm not—“ Blaine stuttered and stopped. He wanted to tell Kurt that he wasn’t in love with him like Daisy was with Benjamin, but the essence of the words evaporated from his tongue like water vapor on a blisteringly hot day. _No, I_ am. _I’m in love with you._

A key in a lock. _Click, click, turn, and click._ The tumblers fell into place, a door creaking open in their wake. Nothing about the moment was remarkable, and yet everything was: Blaine had fallen, landed, and settled in love—all without ever feeling it.

 _How couldn’t I have known?_ Blaine thought numbly, all thoughts of their conversation forgotten as he was sent reeling and tumbling and trying to trace it all back to something, some logical point that would explain how friendship and lust had turned to something irrevocable. But he couldn’t—Kurt had long since stolen his heart, and at once Blaine realized that it hadn’t ever really been his own, not since they were riding bikes to the end of the street and trading shy smiles before ever even learning each other’s names.

His daze was broken when Kurt ducked into his line of sight and quipped, “It’s a simple question, _mon ami.”_

At that, Blaine's throat closed up for an entirely different reason. That word, _‘ami.’_ A friend: all Blaine had been, all Blaine would go back to being after they returned to Maine.

“Of course I would,” he finally replied in a bitten-off voice, managing a tight smile as he added, “Band-Aids and all.”

“Aw,” Kurt cooed, and when he leaned up to kiss him again, it felt like he had somehow reached past Blaine and up into the ebony sky, stealing meteors to breathe into his veins. When he pulled back, teeth nipping Blaine’s bottom lip, he asked, “Are you cold?”

“Not really.”

“It’s chilly up here. Let’s go inside.”

Blaine nodded dumbly, and floated silently through packing up their cups and plates and blankets, none of it even registering. All he could think was, _I love you._

Kurt’s smile disappearing past the edge of the R.V. as he climbed down the ladder: _I love you._ Kurt taking Blaine’s iPod and docking it in the bedroom, clicking over to [_Kiss Me_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/59368139358) by Ed Sheeran: _I love you so much._ Kurt undressing them both, his eyes a dark cerulean storm and his smile faint as he pulled Blaine under the covers: _God, I am_ so _in love with you._

The guitar and vocals were low and quiet, barely even audible over the sounds of the people still gathered in their groups outside, but as Kurt lay his head on Blaine’s shoulder and hummed into his skin, he caught the words, _“With a feeling I’ll forget, I’m in love now.”_

_I’m so fucked._

“What?” Kurt asked, looking up at him. Blaine could have punched himself in the face, not realizing he’d been thinking aloud. “Why?”

“I’m just—exhausted, is all,” he said, rubbing at his eyes for effect.

Kurt sat up suddenly, eyes sweeping Blaine’s bare arms and chest. “Blaine, you—you’re _shivering;_ are you sure you’re not cold?”

“No, I’m not cold,” he replied, and it was only as Kurt’s gaze caught his own, lingering with a penetrating stare, that Blaine realized his mistake. He kept his face as impassive as he possibly could, but when Kurt’s eyes widened infinitesimally, he knew the game was lost.

Kurt had been telling him for years that his face read like an open book in large print; there was no way in hell that he hadn’t been able to figure it out.

But instead of bolting or even simply turning away, as Blaine was expecting, Kurt’s features arranged into a small smile that didn’t look at all forced. He leaned over and pressed a drawn-out kiss to the skin just over Blaine’s heart. _Why do you have to make it so easy?_

“We should get some sleep. Long drive tomorrow,” Kurt said, quietly puncturing the tension. He pulled himself flush into Blaine’s side and laid his head back on Blaine’s shoulder, every point of contact a warm revelation.

“Yeah, okay,” Blaine murmured, winding his arm around Kurt’s shoulders. He held on as tightly as he could, brought the moment closer, complicated and fleeting as it was. With a sigh, he said, “Goodnight, then.”

“’Night, B.”

 

**Distance: 7,598 miles**

*

**Day 062: Saturday 17th November, 2012  
Torch Songs (Texas)**

_“What about_ Boys Don’t Cry?”

_“That title’s clearly lying. You know I’ll be sobbing by the end if that’s what it’s called.”_

_“You cry at everything; I’m used to it by now.”_

 

“Okay, here goes,” Kurt said, taking a deep breath and steeling himself. “I know you probably have a lot of questions and this is going against literally everything we said, but Blaine… I’m in love with you, and I think… I think you love me back. I don’t know what this means for us, and this is probably the last thing—“

“Who are you talking to?”

As Blaine opened the bathroom door and poked his head inside, Kurt almost jumped out of his skin. “No one,” he said quickly, turning back to the mirror and making a show of checking his hair.

“You look fine, come on,” Blaine urged him, and grabbed his hand to pull him from the bathroom.

“Just ‘fine?’” Kurt asked breathlessly, tugging on Blaine’s hand. ‘Fine’ definitely wasn’t enough to describe his outfit: a tightly fitted, seagrass green shirt with his white double-breasted jacket, and mulberry purple jeans that hugged his ass and thighs. As Blaine stopped, Kurt turned in a slow circle on his toes, looking at Blaine over his shoulder. “I think you can do much better than ‘fine,’ mister.”

“Kurt, sweetheart,” Blaine began, cupping his jaw, “you look about a hundred thousand times better than ‘fine,’ but if I spend too much longer staring at your ass in those jeans, we’re not going to make it to the gig.”

And there it was again, that affectionate little nickname Blaine had given him that twisted up Kurt’s stomach in a pleasant coil of rushing love. He leaned down for a fleeting kiss, taking what no longer felt stolen, simply good and easy and right.

“Anyway, you haven’t said anything about _my_ outfit,” Blaine chided him in a tone of mock-seriousness, and performed his own spin on the spot. “Well?”

Kurt took him in in his pale grey swallow-print shirt, maroon shawl collar cardigan and cuffed dark wash jeans. Buttoned just so, the cardigan accented the breadth of his shoulders and the nip of his waist perfectly. “You look like…” he trailed off. “High school you. You look really good.”

“Having jailbait dreams?” Blaine drawled.

Kurt rolled his eyes. “Come on, Mister Punctual. Wouldn’t wanna be late, now would we?” With that reminder, he spun on his heel, grabbed his phone and keys, and swept out of the R.V. with an undeniable spring in his step.

Nothing was going to bring Kurt down today, not even the fact that they were parked at a Walmart. He barely gave the sign a second glance as Blaine caught him up and they strolled past, making their way into downtown Austin.

“What’s got you in such a good mood?” Blaine asked, nudging his shoulder while they walked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Kurt replied airily.

A little of the day’s heat still lingered, taking the edge off the cool breeze coming up behind them; for once, Kurt felt as if he was being carried comfortably along rather than riding the back of a hurricane and holding on for dear life. He felt buoyant, jubilant, excited. His chest clenched every single time he pictured that softness around Blaine’s honeyed eyes, the one that spoke of affection and desire and, yes, love. Kurt had known that look as soon as he saw it, more transparent than plate glass and plain as day.

Blaine was in love with him, and he loved Blaine back, and now… Now it was finally time to come clean.

He’d planned it all down to the last painstaking detail. The colors he would wear—green for luck, white for renewal, and purple for transformation—what he would say, how he would do it. He’d even texted April to change his song from _All These Things That I’ve Done_ to one that he felt better summed up his feelings. It was to be a call, and knowing that his solo performance was going to come before Blaine’s, he could only hope that Blaine would respond in kind.

When they arrived, they found the gay bar a flat one-story building painted sky blue and off-white with a looping neon sign proclaiming _Cheer Up Charlie’s._ The band was already set up under the giant, suspended marquee in the courtyard.

“Disturbing new development,” Kurt said in a low voice, nudging Blaine’s side and gesturing toward where Liam and Daniel were huddled together behind the stage, heads too close and smiles too wide as they talked. Liam was wearing a tie-dye tee bearing the slogan, _Keep Austin Weird._ Kurt hoped it was an ironic choice.

“Didn’t April say they were barely speaking the last time we were all together?” Blaine asked, sounding utterly confounded, and Kurt nodded.

“Yep. Something about Green Day, I think? Either way—“

“Guys, you’re here!”

Kurt whipped around to be greeted with a hug from April and a characteristically shy half-wave from Marcie before Blaine lifted her off her feet and spun her in a tight circle. She was blushing when he set her down, and fiddled with a few strands of hair that had fallen out of her sleek up-do.

“What’s with Liam and Dan?” Kurt asked without preamble, and April rolled her eyes.

“Really? _That’s_ the first thing you ask about,” she said flatly. “What about, ‘Hi, best friend! It’s been too long, and I feel awful about not calling you for longer than five minutes since _Michigan,_ and how’s your throat now, and oh my god, that outfit looks incredible on you!’”

“Okay, I get your point. I’m sorry,” Kurt said, raising his hands in submission. “I _do_ feel awful, and that outfit _does_ look incredible. How _is_ your throat?”

“That’s better,” April said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m still getting over it, so no singing for me for a few more days. And by the way, the Liam and Dan thing is your fault.”

“What? My fault?” Kurt asked.

“She told them about you and Blaine,” Marcie interjected.

“What, and they thought it was a good idea?” Blaine asked, chuckling. His eyes danced with humor as he glanced at Kurt, slowly looking him up and down. At Marcie’s nod, he added, “Well… It does get lonely on the road…”

“Yeah, okay, _loneliness_ was a factor in you two finally getting it on,” April scoffed.

“April,” Kurt warned.

“If that’s your story, stick to it. I don’t care,” she said airily. Kurt’s jaw set and he took her by the elbow, leaving Marcie and Blaine exchanging a glance while he steered her toward the fence that bordered the courtyard.

“I need you to stop,” he said, and April just rolled her eyes again.

“Kurt, come on. I _know_ you, and I know Blaine, and this thing you have going on? Anyone with _eyes_ can see that it’s more than just—“

“I’m in love with him,” Kurt interrupted, and her eyes went wide. “What, like you’re surprised?”

“No, I just never thought I’d get you to admit it,” she breathed, and grabbed his hand. “Kurt, this is so exciting! Does he… I mean, of course he feels the same way, the way he looks at—oh my god, have you told him yet?”

“I’m planning on doing it tonight,” Kurt said, gaze sliding to Blaine and Marcie as they wove their way through the crowd toward the bar. “So just… Take it easy, okay?”

“Oh my god, of course,” she said, nodding her head so quickly it was almost comical. “Are you nervous?”

“Hummels don’t get nervous.”

April leveled him with a single look. “Kurt, are you _nervous?”_

Kurt swallowed, and gave her a tremulous smile. “Terrified.”

“Piece of advice,” April began, “do _not_ break eye contact with him when you’re singing that song. After that, you probably won’t even need to tell him.”

“You’re really sure he feels the same way,” Kurt stated. He felt like a teenager all over again, but couldn’t help needing the extra reassurance.

“You forget that I know what song he picked,” April reminded him with a wink, and linked arms with him to lead him toward the stage. “Now. Let’s rock the shit outta this place, and get you your man while we’re at it. You game?”

“Bring it on.”

Five minutes later, all members of The One With The Band were assembled: Hugh behind his drum kit; Drake on bass, and Daniel and Liam furnished with guitars off to his right; Kurt shared the two backup microphones with April and Marcie to the left, and Blaine took center to open. The main lights dropped, the only remaining illumination provided by the giant screen behind them, undulating between deep and pale shades of blue. The crowd noise had mostly died down to a muted murmur punctuated only by a few coughs and throats being cleared. The quiet was enough to have Kurt’s stomach churning.

A single glimpse of Blaine’s reassuring smile, and the nerves were gone.

A fleeting brush of their reaching fingertips, and _Kurt_ was gone.

There was no introduction this time, simply Liam counting them in and strumming the introduction of their opening song: _[After Hours](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/61826886950)._ It was fun and energetic, and sure to get the crowd moving. As Hugh joined in and the lights came up, Blaine stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, his back straight, and both hands curled around the mic.

 _“This door is always open, this door is always open, no one has the guts to shut us out,”_ he sang. _“But if we have to go now, I guess there’s always hope that_ Charlie’s _will be serving after hours.”_

The crowd cheered at Blaine’s inclusion of the bar’s name, and Kurt couldn’t help but grin, even despite his distaste for April’s over-the-top, cheesy back-up choreography: tapping their watches and bobbing their heads side to side in time with the beat as they provided vocals on, _“Time means nothing.”_

It was a fantastic choice to open the show—bright and bouncy enough to engage the audience but not showing off everything the band could do, not yet. That would be saved for the finale, when they closed the show with their own creation, a part for everyone and insanity abounds.

During the final refrain, Blaine removed the mic from its stand and strutted across the stage, slotting himself in between Kurt and Marcie and snaking his arm around Kurt’s waist. When Blaine sang, _“We’re all right where we’re supposed to be,”_ Kurt responded with, _“Time means nothing.”_ And when he was back at his mic stand, the song drawing to its close, he only momentarily broke his rapport with the crowd to sing directly to Kurt, _“Say that you’ll stay.”_

 _Isn’t that my line?_ Kurt wondered in distraction, listening without a full mind as the guys played through the song’s final bars and the crowd burst into applause louder even than what they’d received in Ann Arbor.

“Cheer Up Charlie’s!” Blaine exclaimed into the mic, raising his arms. “A _very_ good evening to all of you! We’re absolutely thrilled to be here in Austin, so thank you for having us. We’re playing two sets tonight, and we’ve left some song lists scattered around because we’ll be inviting a few of you up here to jam with us in the second set, so don’t be shy! If there’s a song you want to sing, write your name on a slip and bring it on up.

“My name’s Blaine,” he continued, and then gestured to each of the other band members in turn, “behind me on drums you’ll see Hugh, over on guitar and keyboard you’ll see Liam and Dan, on bass we’ve got Drake, there’s April on vocals, and Marcie on trumpet.

“And next up, ladies and gentlemen, we have… Kurt,” Blaine said, voice soft as he motioned Kurt over to the mic.

He went with weak knees and trembling hands, not knowing how much of it came from his adrenalin rush, and took the stand with a kiss to Blaine’s cheek. Blaine’s hand lingered at his waist for a moment, and then was gone. Kurt was alone under a spotlight, and it was almost as terrifying as the thought of offering himself to Blaine, flaws and all.

Kurt watched him climb down from the stage—his anchor, his touchstone, his reason—and glanced over at April, who smiled at him reassuringly. He could only hope that [the song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/61826972093) he had chosen to encapsulate everything managed to resonate in the way he wanted it to. It said it all, and said it all with hope. From his point of view, at least.

Hugh took up the percussive introduction; Kurt let his eyes slip momentarily closed and drew in a centering breath. _This is it, Kurt,_ he thought. _This is where it begins._

 _“You and I, blurred lines, we come together every time,”_ he began, fixing his gaze upon the middle-distance. He couldn’t look at Blaine, not when he still had an entire song to get through. _“Two wrongs, no rights, we lose ourselves at night. From the outside, from the outside everyone must be wondering why we try. Why do we try?”_

The song was soulful, not something that Kurt was used to singing, and though his upper range was still somewhat unpracticed, he found it easy to let his voice run over the notes in a comfortable flow. Being up on stage and feeling Blaine’s eyes on him, singing for him and letting one hand grip the mic and the other drift up into his hair, Kurt felt… Sexy. Powerful. Like he could do this.

_“Baby, in our wildest moments, we could be the greatest, we could be the greatest. Baby, in our wildest moments, we could be the worst of all.”_

He swayed in time with the beat, his eyes finally coming to rest upon Blaine as he sang, _“What could bring bad luck? I’ve been looking at you too much.”_ Drawing Blaine in was easy, and keeping him was easier. Their charged eye contact only faltered over, _“We walk, we walk the line. Looking back I miss it, our wildest moments. Are you thinking what if, what if we ruined it all?”_ but recovered quickly enough for Kurt not to let the knot at the top of his stomach travel too far up and make him start biting his tongue again.

The song was a contradiction, lyrics that illustrated the war Kurt had been waging against himself for longer than he could ever truly know, but no more. They could be the worst, but they could also be the greatest. All he had to do was leap, and hope that Blaine was there to break his fall.

By the song’s end, Hugh playing him out with the same drums that had begun it, Kurt was flying. He grinned and took his bow, smiled in response to the covert wink April threw his way, and accepted another passing kiss from Blaine as he took his place in backup once more.

“Just you wait,” April whispered, leaning close enough to bump her shoulder against his as the next song began. “He’s closing the first set with it.”

“You’ll love it, Kurt,” Marcie said from his other side. With a wistful glance, she added, “He’s really special.”

Kurt glanced down at her fondly—she might as well have a flashing neon sign over her head that declared, ‘Crush!’ But she was young, and more importantly, wasn’t taking it to the creepy place. “Yeah, he is,” he replied at length, and hooked his pinky finger around the one she offered.

The remainder of the first set passed by in a blur. The stage was a bubble upon which lights were trained—Kurt could hear the crowd, even see some of their silhouettes beneath the marquee, but he was in a world where nothing existed save for the music and the love put into performing it. Before he knew it, April was ushering everyone off the stage, save for Blaine, Hugh, and Liam.

 _This is it,_ Kurt thought as April squeezed his arm. Blaine looped an electro-acoustic guitar across his body and took a seat on a tall wooden stool before his microphone. _Please, B. Please_ tell _me you feel the same._

As Blaine began to strum the opening bars of a song that Kurt didn’t recognize, he leaned forward to speak into the mic. “Alright, folks. After this, we’ll be taking a quick break so that you can all recover from the power of our awesome—just kidding. But we’ll be back in fifteen minutes. This one is called _[Easy](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/61827087792)._

 _“What’s a boy to do when you tell your tale? And it never fails, I just end up feeling bad for you,”_ Blaine sang, and Kurt’s blood ran cold. He grabbed April’s hand and held on as tightly as he dared. _“With your hang-dog eyes, you can bring me down; now I’m wrapped around your whole hand, stop looking so surprised.”_

“What the fuck,” he hissed at April, who did nothing more than simply hold up a finger, her dark eyes still trained on the stage and her smile stretching wide.

 _“You make it easy, you make it easy,”_ Blaine continued, his voice strong and assured and undercut with a tenderness that took the edge off Kurt’s anxiety.

 _What are you trying to tell me?_ he wondered desperately, and then Blaine began to sing of someone forgetting what they were hiding for, someone being easy to adore even though they wanted to run away, and it all became clear as crystal. It was a response to Kurt’s call; it was all or nothing; it was a _plea._ Wasn’t it?

“See?” April said into his ear, and he looked at her dazedly. “See what I mean?”

He nodded dumbly, and his heart leapt into his throat when he turned his attention back to the stage. Blaine was watching him with intent and an astounding conviction as he sang the words, _“Look what you have done. I can do the same, two can play this game; you’ll no longer be the only one.”_

The rich, smooth timbre of Blaine’s voice only grew stronger as he dove into the final chorus, and Kurt’s resolve increased tenfold. No more fear, no more excuses, no more tip-toeing around a future he couldn’t possibly know would ever arrive. He was going to tell Blaine that he was in love with him, and Blaine would tell him that he hadn’t fallen in love alone, and they would go back to the R.V. and Kurt would finally find out exactly what “I love you” tasted like as he breathed it into Blaine’s mouth.

“Thank you, Cheer Up Charlie’s!” Blaine cried, wrapping up the song to rapturous applause. Kurt glanced out over the crowd and could see almost every single person in the gay bar—both men and women—gazing up at him adoringly. He wondered again why this wasn’t what Blaine was doing every single night. “We’ll be back in fifteen, so don’t go anywhere!”

And then Kurt was moving, pushing his way back up onto the stage where Blaine was clapping Liam and Hugh on the back in turn, and he took a deep breath, about to ask Blaine to go somewhere they could talk in private, and—

“So what do you think about doing this for a living?” Hugh asked, eyes trained on Blaine, and the floor fell out from beneath Kurt’s feet.

Blaine openly gaped at him for a second, and Kurt just stood there, hands by his sides.

“What do you mean?”

“The band’s breaking up after this tour,” Hugh said, “and a few of us are moving to New York to start a new thing, see if we can make it. April doesn’t wanna sing lead, Will’s staying back home for good now, and we were going to try and find someone there, but dude… We already know you, and you’ve got _exactly_ what we need.”

There was a roaring in Kurt’s ears, and he could barely hear Blaine’s sputtering response as he looked between Kurt and Hugh. He felt like an idiot, working himself up all night to tell Blaine that he’d seen the look in his eyes, because now he was seeing an entirely different look—like Blaine had seen his entire future flash in front of him, a future that was brighter than anything Kurt could possibly offer. He was going to go to New York and start making the music that still lingered in patches across the skin of Kurt’s back—it was a reaffirmation of the nomad Kurt had been afraid of when he’d agreed to come along for the road trip, and he was back standing in the shadow of a mountain.

“Just think about it, okay? You don’t have to give me an answer now,” Hugh was saying with a tone of finality, and as he passed them to join the rest of the band at the bar, Blaine turned to Kurt and opened his mouth.

“You should do it,” Kurt blurted, cutting off whatever Blaine was about to say.

“Sure, just waste my entire college education,” Blaine replied derisively, but it was too late. Kurt already knew that Blaine wanted to go more than anything; he’d been shifting for weeks already. They would get back to Maine at the end of this road trip and it would be over. It wasn’t like Kurt was just going to up sticks and move to New York—he had a career of his own to think about beginning, and the last time he’d checked, being a groupie wasn’t exactly a viable profession.

“Well, like Hugh said… Think about it,” he managed, pasting on a smile that he hoped didn’t look as fake as it felt. “You’re different when you perform. Something about it just seems right.”

Blaine scoffed and shook his head, and guided Kurt off stage with a hand in the small of his back.

“So what did you think?” Blaine asked as they stood at the bar waiting to be served, nudging his shoulder.

Kurt swallowed. “You were really good,” he replied, mouth dry.

“Hey, what were you gonna tell me earlier?”

“When?”

“I asked you why you were in such a good mood, and you said you’d tell me later,” Blaine clarified.

“Oh, _that._ Nothing, really,” Kurt breathed, turning his gaze on the crowd for the moment it took him to collect himself. _Nothing, except that I love you. Nothing, except that I would do pretty much anything to hear you say that you love me back. Nothing, except that I’ve been daydreaming what my life will look like in five, ten, fifteen years, and in every single one there you are by my side, holding not just my hand but all of me._

Kurt didn’t say any of that. How could he? Blaine deserved to have nothing standing in his way, whatever decision he made about his future. He deserved to be free to have his name up in lights, not tied to Maine while Kurt tried to figure out where he was going and how he was going to get there.

April caught his eye as she wound her way through the crowd, and gave him a questioning thumbs-up. He simply shook his head, and scuffed his shoe against the bar’s poured concrete base.

“Where do you go?” Blaine asked around a chuckle. Kurt cut off his train of thought and looked at him in question, and he continued, “When you get that faraway look in your eyes.”

“Are you saying that I’m vacant?” Kurt replied, dredging humor from reserves he’d have thought depleted.

“No, no. No, it’s… You look like you’re in this whole other world, some place I can’t find you.”

“I don’t go anywhere.”

“Not even sometimes?” Blaine pressed.

“Maybe, I…” Kurt trailed off, finally letting the question have the weight that Blaine obviously intended. And he saw that it was true—for weeks he’d been skirting the edges of a brave new world, dancing within reach of possibility and metamorphosis, but now came the reality check. Now came the break of day, chasing away the artifice and bathing everything in fact. He shook his head, and finally answered, “No. No, I’m always here.”

Blaine smiled, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “Good.”

 _Yeah,_ Kurt thought sadly. _Good._

 

**Distance: 8,108 miles**

*

**Day 065: Tuesday 20th November, 2012  
Look Down (Oklahoma)**

_“Come on, it must fit in somewhere.”_

_“That’s what she said.”_

_“Blaine, really? We’re talking about_ Rain Man.”

 

As soon as they walked into the lobby of the Route 66 Museum in Clinton, Oklahoma, it immediately felt like passing into the days of a bygone era. The Rolling Stones’ cover of [_Route 66_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/61827194779) was playing over the P.A. system, and as Kurt caught sight of the classic red Chevy parked in front of the curved windows, Blaine watched him light up from the inside out.

“Oh my god,” Kurt breathed, slowly approaching the car with his hands flexing at his sides. “This is a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. What I wouldn’t give to own one of these.”

“Is grand theft auto still a felony?” Blaine stage-whispered, and Kurt cast him a wistful look.

“You’ll just have to buy one for me when you’ve wrapped on your first big-budget shoot,” he said, his gaze full of reverence as he returned it to the vintage car.

Blaine hummed non-committally, for once not wanting to talk about his intended career path. More and more as of late, it was starting to feel like the wrong fit for him. He still loved the prospect of directing, but now that he was no longer surrounded by film day in, day out, he found that his passion for it was muffled somehow. The second Hugh had approached him with the idea of fronting the new band, creating and performing their own music—in New York, no less—something had seemed to click.

He’d ignored it until Kurt had shut down on him once again. All day before the Cheer Up Charlie’s show, Blaine had been sure Kurt was going to say something about them: their arrangement; his own feelings; _anything._ But he hadn’t, and now Blaine needed to have some kind of contingency plan for what happened when they got back to Maine. Whatever it was, it couldn’t involve staying there and pretending to pick up the threads of a life he’d all but kicked to the curb and forgotten about.

“Ready?” Kurt asked, pulling him from his thoughts. Blaine nodded, and after signing the guest registry and paying their admission fee to the chatty proprietor, they set off on their self-guided tour.

If Blaine had thought the glass-tiled front of the museum had looked cool, it was nothing compared to progressing their way through the museum itself. Each room was themed around a different decade in the highway’s history and featured exhibits of vintage cars reaching as far back as the thirties. It was more like an art gallery than a museum. The history of the place was overwhelming and Blaine drank it all in, his eyes roaming over old-style gas pumps and a wall full of postcards from all of the states through which Route 66 wound its way. The rooms were interconnected by a series of tunnel-like hallways, the walls plastered with newspapers, headlines proclaiming _MARILYN DEAD, PRESIDENT KENNEDY IS SLAIN, and THE WAR IS OVER!_

“I’m glad we have Leona,” Kurt said after they’d taken turns posing with the VW camper covered in sixties hippy designs. “I don’t think we’d have made it this far in one of these.”

“Yeah, being on top of each other like that all the time…” Blaine trailed off, shooting him a wink.

“Please, like you’d complain about me being on top of you.”

“Never said that I would.”

“In fact, I think it’s your favorite thing,” Kurt continued loftily, bending at the waist to examine a model car inside a glass case—a yellow 1967 Ford Mustang, Blaine read from his position opposite. He glanced through the glass at Kurt and took in the fascinated look in his eyes, his blue irises reflecting the yellow of the model car and suddenly taking on a singularly unique shade of green that Blaine hadn’t seen in fourteen years.

“And what makes you think that?” Blaine asked in a low voice, even though he could see from just a glance that there was no one else around.

“After all the times we’ve slept together, what _wouldn’t_ make me think that?” Kurt asked, though it was more a statement than a question. Slowly, he circled around the case to back Blaine up against it, brow furrowed as his eyes drifted down Blaine’s body and closed. He cocked his head to the right, tensed his shoulders, and let out a low, _“Mmm.”_

“What are you—“ Blaine began, but Kurt silenced him with a finger pressed against his lips. Eyes still closed—clearly trusting Blaine to keep watch—Kurt looped his arms around Blaine’s neck and pulled their bodies tightly together.

 _“Fuck,”_ Kurt whispered, the fingers of one hand carding through Blaine’s hair. _“Right—right there… Fuck, Kurt, harder…”_

“Oh my god, I do _not_ sound like that,” Blaine protested, but Kurt’s breathing grew shallow and harsh, hitching in his chest as his arms shivered and he crowded Blaine even closer to the glass case. The corners of it pressed between his shoulder blades almost painfully.

 _“Just a little more…”_ Kurt pleaded, his voice pitched high and desperate. Blaine’s face burned as he continued, _“Come on, fuck me, make me yours.”_

“Kurt, you have to st—“

When Kurt opened his eyes, his pupils were blown wide, and Blaine fell silent. Kurt leaned down, so close that their lips were a hair’s breadth apart, and without breaking eye contact whispered, _“Please, please—“_

“Someone’s coming,” Blaine blurted, and Kurt abruptly stepped back, hands falling to his sides.

As if nothing had happened at all, he went back to looking at the exhibits, casting only one salacious look over his shoulder and stating, “No one’s coming.”

Blaine felt like he’d been knocked over sideways. How could this Kurt—his favorite Kurt, all sultry tease and subtle love—have eluded him for so long? Because what they had was love; Blaine could see it, now. Yet still he waited, because it was all he knew how to do when he’d put the object of his affection up on a pedestal without any idea of how to climb up and stand beside them.

He waited for the descent, the press of a kiss that tasted like love, the vowels and consonants that would spell it all out, knowing all the while that they would never come. And really, what reason could he have to think they would? History seemed to repeat itself for Blaine Anderson—at least where his unrequited crushes were concerned. He’d mooned after Jamie, one of the guys working at the Subway on Pleasant Street, for the entire summer before he’d left for his internship. He had put the guy up on a pedestal and never done a goddamn thing about it, because how could anyone reach so high as to touch an idol?

And this thing with Kurt was so much more than an unrequited crush. If the feelings were so much more powerful, didn’t it follow that the likelihood of it turning out the way Blaine wanted was even less unlikely? The fear of it was paralyzing.

 _Do you honestly believe that this is just a road trip thing?_ he wanted to ask as he followed Kurt through the last hallway and out into the foyer. Blaine watched his fingertips trail along the wall just as they trailed along his own skin in dark clutches of night, and wondered, _What if we’d met in another life? What if I was different, braver, more sure that I’m even worthy of you? What then?_

“Gift shop?” Kurt asked lightly when Blaine caught up with him. “I’m thinking a shirt from this place might not be so bad.”

“Yeah?” Blaine asked, his mood brightening.

“Just this once.”

 

Later that day, long after darkness had fallen and they had both glutted themselves on one another, Blaine left Kurt sleeping. Unable to drift off himself, he padded out into the living room in socks and pajama pants, pulling on his hoodie as he went; the nights were turning colder.

With music quietly playing in the background, Blaine caught up on the news and replied to a few emails he’d been meaning to get to, exactly none of it distracting him in the way he’d hoped. Every thirty seconds or so, his eyes drifted to the half-closed bedroom door, and he realized just how lonely it could be on the road.

After only a moment’s hesitation, he opened his blog and began a new post.

_I think I need some advice, guys._

Blaine considered his next words carefully, fingers poised over the keyboard. He sighed quietly, the sound barely carrying further than the laptop.

 _The thing is The thing is that I know you’ve all been able to see it. How I’ve been feeling, how I’ve been_ falling, _even if I couldn’t. You’ll have to clue me in to how you do that one of these days. But the point is that I really don’t know what to do about it, any more than I did the night I realized that… That I, Blaine Anderson, am in love with Kurt Hummel._

He stopped short, the cursor blinking at him almost tauntingly as he took in the words he wanted to vocalize but couldn’t, fear holding his heart captive when it should have been Kurt. Blaine had thought them over and over, at least once per waking minute in the days since the meteor shower, but hadn’t let them out. It had been… Nice, at first, having the thrill of something secret and new—old, he kept reminding himself, but newly realized—to hold close, to keep just for him. But what had felt like a feather between his fingers at first now felt like a weight around his neck, full of responsibility and ruin.

 _I wonder if you were all taking bets on how long it’d be before I realized or owned up to it. Sorry to anyone who lost out,_ he wrote, halting between sentences as he tried to work his way around to the point. _The point is that, for a while, I was doing okay. I even kind of thought that Kurt might feel the same, or at least be on the way to it. I mean, god, he told me back in Minnesota that he’d thought he was caving, which was why he—well, you know. So it’s not like I’d be completely off-base, right? And all day on Saturday he kept looking at me like I put the sun in the sky, and I was so sure that he was going to say something._

 _But he didn’t. I mean… Why would he fall for me anyway, right? He’s just. He’s everything._ Everything.

 _I talked to Hugh at the gig on Saturday night, and he told me that a few of them are forming a new band once their tour’s over and moving to New York to see if they can make it. He wants me to go with them, sing and write, and the first thing I thought was,_ What about Kurt?

_Should I hold on? Should I wait, half-expecting to get my heart broken? Should I just take this for exactly what it we’ve said it is, take everything he’ll give me and let the timer run out?_

_What should I do?_

After Blaine hit the ‘submit’ button, he closed his incognito window and shoved the laptop away. He stretched out his legs and arms, the deep ache of satiation in his limbs reminding him just how rough they’d gotten earlier, and despite the heaviness of what he’d just been putting into words, he couldn’t help but smile a little to himself.

He turned to curl up on his side, arm tucked up under his head, and closed his eyes. But it was no use—sleep was eluding him, just as it had been toward the beginning of the trip. Idly, he wished that Kurt might wake up of his own accord and suggest making warm milk. Blaine could never get it to taste quite the same when he made it himself.

When a few minutes had passed with no respite, Blaine sighed heavily, picked up his phone and stood, making his way to the cab and dropping himself into the driver’s seat. Resting both arms over the steering wheel, he leaned over it to look out into the wooded clearing at the center of the semicircle formed by the other few R.V.’s and campers in the park. There was a group of people gathered around the fire pit, all drinking from red Dixie cups and paired off with blankets wrapped around their shoulders.

He and Kurt still hadn’t had a campfire, and Blaine ached to know what it would be like, now that they were… Whatever they were. Their campfires used to be legendary, all-night affairs that only ended when the embers were dying out, and Blaine had always found himself entranced by the inherent romance of sitting by the dancing flames and speaking with hushed voices and shadowed eyes. There was something intrinsically special about that aspect of their shared childhood, and Blaine longed to recapture it.

His woolgathering was interrupted when his phone buzzed in the cup holder, and he swiped his thumb across the screen to open the new email that had just arrived.

It was a comment on his blog, submitted anonymously and signed only with the initial F. There was no text other than a YouTube link. It only took a moment for Blaine’s curiosity to get the better of him.

Having never really been a fan of the artist’s work, the corners of his mouth twisted when he saw Cary Brothers’ name beneath the video window, but the song— _[Ride](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/62286596761)—_ was one that he hadn’t heard before, so he let it play. After all, there must have been a reason that ‘F,’ whoever they may be, had sent it to him.

The song had a slow guitar intro, quiet at first and full of melancholy; almost immediately Blaine sat up straighter in his seat, setting his phone back into the cup holder and letting his palms cup his knees.

 _“You are everything I wanted; the scars of all I’ll ever know,”_ Cary sang, _“If I told you you were right would you take my hand tonight? If I told you the reasons why, would you leave your life and ride?”_

Blaine’s eyes slipped closed, exhaustion settling over him like a blanket of snow. He felt himself becoming slowly buried beneath it, the only light above him an unattainable one—he could reach up toward it, but saw only the silhouette of his own hand eclipsing the source of his warmth. The song wrapped itself around him until he knew nothing but its soaring, echoing measures, and he wondered what would happen to him and Kurt if he decided to go to New York.

Knowing what he now knew about how his absence during his internship had affected Kurt, he felt selfish for even considering it. But was it really so selfish for not wanting to be beholden to something that was finite? Then again, how could he give up everything they had discovered between them over the course of this road trip, not to mention all that he had worked so long for?

A shuffling behind him alerted him to Kurt’s sudden presence, and warm, sleep-heavy arms curled around his shoulders.

“I thought you hated Cary Brothers,” Kurt mumbled sleepily as he rested his cheek atop Blaine’s head and swayed a little from side to side.

“Someone sent it to me,” Blaine said.

“One of the guys in London?” Kurt asked, and Blaine nodded absently, grateful for being given an out before having to scrabble around for it himself. “What do you think?”

 _Pretty accurate,_ Blaine thought, but bit his tongue. “I like it.”

Kurt hummed, still swaying as the tips of his fingers drifted up and down Blaine’s chest. He tensed when Cary sang again of the what if’s, and as the song faded into silence, he whispered, “You should come back to bed.”

“What’s in bed?”

“Someone who won’t really mind if you wanna have sex half-asleep.”

“I was hoping that’d be the case,” Blaine said, chuckling.

“It’s like one mind,” Kurt replied, and straightened up.

As Blaine turned and stood, he drank in the sight of Kurt—relaxed like he rarely was during daylight hours, his Henley and sweatpants rumpled and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He looked far more inviting than the mess inside Blaine’s head, so he left everything behind in the cab—his phone, his thoughts, his reliance on lyrics to put into words what he couldn’t—and simply let himself be led.

 

**Distance: 8,584 miles**

*

**Day 067: Thursday 22nd November, 2012  
Lost and Found (Kansas)**

_“We already had_ Elizabethtown, _remember?”_

 _“Oh, right. Umm…_ Mars Attacks?”

_“Now we’re talking.”_

 

“Blaine!” Kurt called at the top of his voice. It echoed all around him in the stillness of the night, and after shrugging his arms against his sides, he adjusted his backpack and carried on walking, taking left after left after left.

Even with the comforting twinkle of the stars above him and his flashlight in hand, the darkness inside the maze remained oppressive.

“’Let’s turn off here,’ he said. ‘It’s a maze; it’ll totally be fun,’ he said,” Kurt grumbled aloud, shaking his flashlight when it flickered. This had all the potential of a grisly horror movie: two very much non-virginal boys lost in a maze in the middle of nowhere, separated because one of them had insisted on racing to the middle for their Thanksgiving picnic.

Why they couldn’t have had it inside the R.V.—where it was warm, and more importantly, safe—Kurt didn’t know. What he did know was that he had been mostly powerless to resist those goddamn puppy eyes of Blaine’s, even when he was slowly but surely resigning himself to the inevitable end of what they had. It was the beginning of a long, painfully drawn-out goodbye; they would always be best friends, of course, there was no doubting that. Blaine was his _air._ But Blaine had the prospect of a new life waiting for him, now, and Kurt had no right to hold him back from it. He loved Blaine, and as much as the thought left him cold, he had to let him go.

Just as he reached another dead end, his flashlight flickered a few times and sputtered out. Kurt swore under his breath and switched to the miniature flashlight he kept on his keys.

It was too quiet so deep in the maze. Kurt stopped where he stood to weigh listening to his iPod against being able to hear if Blaine called for him; as he moved to take off his backpack, his phone started to ring in his pocket, The Dandy Warhols’ [_Bohemian Like You_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/62286760663) blaring at top volume.

When he saw _Dad (Home)_ emblazoned across the screen, he immediately answered.

“Hey, little brother!” Finn’s voice greeted him brightly, his infectious happiness making Kurt smile every bit as much as if he’d just been wrapped up in one of Finn’s bone-crushing bear hugs. There were in fact only a few months between them, but having been an only child for most of his life like Kurt, Finn took his role in their new family seriously. “Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Happy Thanksgiving, Finn,” Kurt said, inhaling deeply and imagining that he could detect faint scents of laundry detergent and American Crew hair wax on the night air. “Where are Dad and Carole?”

“Walking off dinner,” Finn said incredulously. “I mean, I’ve got a total food coma situation going on right now, and they’re like, old. You know? I don’t know how they do it.”

“Ha, and how many helpings did you have compared to them?” Kurt asked.

“Everyone had seconds,” came the answer, followed by a long pause. “Okay, I had, like, two more helpings after that. But it’s Thanksgiving! Isn’t eating crap tons of food the whole point?”

Kurt shook his head, grinning to himself, and sat down on the ground, taking off his backpack and leaning against the hedge wall. If he kept walking without paying attention to where he was going, he’d only end up more lost than he already was. “So how are things, how’s grad school so far?”

“Really great,” Finn began. “The new classes are awesome; I feel like I’m really getting a handle on things that I wanna be teaching, you know? And I’ve found a couple of kids to tutor, so I’m doing that on weekends—that’s how I got the money to fly home.”

“That’s fantastic, Finn. I’m so proud of you.”

“And I, uh… I met this girl…”

Kurt sat bolt upright. A girl? This was big news. After Finn’s epically awful break-up with Quinn Fabray during sophomore year, he’d flitted between a few girls without any of them ever sticking more than a couple of months at most. He’d stopped even mentioning girls at all.

Carefully, he said, “Go on.”

“So we had an assignment in class to go watch a musical, right? And there was this touring show that came to town, _West Side Story._ So a bunch of us from my class decided to go see that instead of just renting one on Netflix, and like, it was great and everything, but…” Finn trailed off with a sigh that didn’t sound a single bit weary. “It was _after_ the show. Stacey and Nola wanted to do the whole stage door thing because they were, like, drooling all over the guy who played Tony, and we weren’t exactly in the nicest part of town, so I went back there with them.

“Anyway, so we were the first ones there and we waited _forever,_ and then the girl who played Maria—Rachel’s her name, Rachel Berry,” Finn continued, speaking the girl’s name with a kind of reverence Kurt hadn’t heard since Quinn, “she came out, and she’s just… God, Kurt, she’s _beautiful._ She’s tiny—shorter than Blaine—and she’s just crazy talented, and there was this moment where we looked at each other and I just… Felt it.”

There was a long pause, and Kurt realized that his fingers were clenched too tightly around the strap of his backpack. “What happened next?!” he prompted breathlessly.

“Well, we talked a little but it was super awkward because at first she thought Stacey was my girlfriend—which, _dude—_ and then when she figured out the reason I _really_ wasn’t mad that Stacey was drooling over Tony, she wrote her number on my playbill thing,” Finn said. “But she was only in town for that one night, so I decided to call her right away and… She came over and we got that _insane_ Super Taco pizza from Sarpino’s that I told you about, and we stayed up ‘til sunrise just talking.”

“Oh my god, Finn,” Kurt breathed, his throat feeling tight. He’d _never_ heard Finn talk about any girl like this, much less after just one night. “So… If she’s touring, how are you guys gonna work it?”

“Her tour finishes up just after Christmas, so she’s gonna come stay for a couple weeks and we’ll see how it goes then. But right now we’re talking or texting most days, and it’s just… She’s really, really awesome.”

“Oh my god,” Kurt repeated, slumping back against the hedge. “Finn, I’m just… I’m really happy for you.”

“Thanks, Kurt,” Finn said softly. After a moment, he asked, “So what’s up with you guys? Burt showed me the GPS thingy earlier—you guys are in Kansas?”

Kurt let out a huff of humorless laughter and scratched at the side of his neck as he glanced around. “I’m currently sitting in the middle of a maze somewhere outside Wichita, because B decided it would be great to spend Thanksgiving lost, cold, and hungry.”

“Wait, since when are you calling him ‘B’ again? You haven’t called him that since you had that crush on him senior year.”

“How did you know about that?” Kurt blurted before he could think to refute it. He could have kicked himself.

“Dude, _everyone_ knew,” Finn told him. “Puck and I had a bet going as to how long it’d take Blaine to figure it out, and he’s still winning.”

“I… I don’t know, a few weeks maybe?” Kurt replied dazedly, memories rushing to the surface of mooning around after Blaine like the love-struck teenager that he was, right before Brad—his first boyfriend—had shown up. His face was on fire.

There was a pregnant pause, during which he heard Finn taking a deep, measured breath. “Are you guys, like—“

“Finn, trust me, you don’t want to know,” Kurt cut him off. It was safer to just nip that conversation in the bud. Changing the subject, he asked, “Will Dad and Carole be back soon?”

A moment of awkward silence passed; Kurt knew that Finn wanted to ask more—he could never stand to be left in the dark if something was going on—but was glad that, at least for now, he seemed to think better of it.

“Yeah—actually, they just walked in,” Finn finally said, and there were a few seconds of static as he covered the mouthpiece to speak to their parents. When he came back, he said, “I miss you, little brother. Happy Thanksgiving.”

“You too, Finn.”

“Just… It’s okay to be happy, you know? If that’s what you’ve got right now then you should hold onto it.”

“What? Finn, what’s that suppo—“

“Kurt?”

One word from his dad, and Kurt felt himself relaxing. The light edge of panic he’d barely even noticed creeping up on him faded back into the shadows, and Kurt smiled. “Hi, Dad. Happy Thanksgiving.”

“You too,” Burt said. Kurt let out a chuckle when he heard Carole calling a happy Thanksgiving in the background, and returned the sentiment. “What’re you boys up to?”

“I was just telling Finn that I’m sitting in a maze somewhere near Wichita, because Blaine thought it’d be fun to make me work for my food,” Kurt said succinctly, and Burt’s ensuing chuckle made him feel a little warmer.

“Singin’ for your supper, huh? I hear that’s a thing you do, now.”

“You—who told you that?”

“Blaine’s mom and I do talk, you know.”

Kurt’s heart leapt into his throat, and he swallowed thickly. “She told you about the singing,” he said.

“Yep. She told me something else interesting, too,” Burt prompted. Kurt knew that his father was a patient man, but that he was expecting an answer to the question he didn’t even need to ask.

“What _exactly_ did she say about—about me and Blaine?” Kurt asked glumly, not the least bit surprised that Alice knew. Blaine spoke to her at least once a week.

“Nothin’ much. Just that you two are ‘seeing how things go,’ whatever that means,” Burt said. “Kurt, why wouldn’t you tell me something like this? I thought we could talk about this stuff.”

“We can, Dad, it’s just…” Kurt trailed off. _Where do I even begin?_ “I’m so confused.”

“Confused about what? About Blaine? Kid, you gotta know he’s nuts about you. Has been ever since you guys were in bow ties.”

“He still wears bow ties.”

“You know what I mean,” Burt said firmly, adding, “And I know you’re nuts about him, too.”

“That’s the whole problem, Dad!” Kurt exclaimed, jumping to his feet and starting to pace back and forth. “I’m in—I _really_ care about him.”

“I’m not exactly _seeing_ a problem, Kurt,” Burt said. “We all know you’ve been in love with him for years.”

“But I _didn’t_ know! I didn’t know. And it’s just… It’s _terrifying,”_ he said, scrubbing his free hand through his hair and down his face. There was a torrent of fear rising inside him like a tidal wave, and for once, he couldn’t help but let it out. “What if—what if we get back to Maine and he finds someone else, or what if he wants to go back to London, or what if he decides he wants to join April’s new band and he moves to New York and I’m just left behind _again?_ What then, Dad?”

“Kurt, I’m only gonna say this once, so listen,” his dad said, voice low and controlled.

He took a deep breath, bracing himself. “Okay.”

“Get your head out of your ass.”

“Dad!”

“I’m serious. So what if he wants to go to London or New York or, Jesus, even _Guam?_ What you guys have is special, and it’s _rare._ Don’t let it go to waste before you even give it a chance.”

Kurt knew that his dad’s words were meant to comfort him, energize him into doing something proactive about his situation, but they only made him feel worse. It wasn’t as simple as just letting himself ‘not waste it’—he needed to save _something_ for himself, because what if he took the leap only to find out that there was no net waiting to break his fall? What if he let his heart be cradled in such nomadic hands only to find that it was stolen away from him completely and he wound up left with nothing?

“I don’t know if it’s that simple,” he finally said, his voice much smaller than he wanted it to be.

“Because you won’t let yourself see the end of the movie,” Burt said heavily. “You’re just making the most of the scene you’ve got in front of you.”

 _That’s all I know how to do,_ Kurt thought, remaining silent.

“Just think about it, okay?”

“Okay, Dad.”

“You promise?”

Kurt nodded, feeling oddly like he’d just been hit with a sucker punch to the gut, and said, “I promise.”

“Okay, then,” Burt said, seemingly satisfied. “And you boys are okay otherwise, you’re having fun?”

“Well, I’m not having a lot of fun right now, what with the maze and all,” Kurt joked, gesturing around himself despite his father being nearly two thousand miles away. “But otherwise, yes. We’re doing great.”

“Glad to hear it. Now go kick his ass,” Burt said. “No one keeps Hummel men from their food, especially not on Thanksgiving.”

“Will do, Dad,” Kurt said around a laugh. “I love you.”

“You love Blaine, too.”

“Oh my _god._ Are you five?”

“Well?” Burt prompted.

“Yes, Dad. I love Blaine, too,” Kurt finally admitted. “And… And thanks.”

“Anytime, kiddo. You know that. Love you.”

As Kurt ended the call, feeling oddly comforted yet more confused than ever, he noticed a string of text messages in his notifications bar, along with an email alert.

 **Blaine (8:01pm)** – I just realized I haven’t kissed you all day. It’s driving me crazy.  
 **Blaine (8:04pm)** – Are you mad at me? You’re mad at me. Come let me make it up to you?  
 **Blaine (8:10pm)** – Where are you?  
 **Blaine (8:12pm)** – Oh god, are you lost? This was a bad idea, wasn’t it?  
 **Blaine (8:19pm)** – Sweetheart?

In spite of everything, Kurt’s stomach twisted pleasantly. He smiled a little, and resolved to get moving again once he’d read the email.

It turned out to be another of those pesky anonymous messages signed by the mysterious ‘F,’ a response to his brief video post from earlier in the day wishing a happy Thanksgiving to his ever-increasing number of followers. It contained a YouTube link, but just as he moved to tap it open, something grabbed him around the waist and knocked him sideways.

He shrieked and struggled as he hit the ground, panicking and lashing out as much as he could, but within moments he realized that it was Blaine pinning him down with an impish grin.

“Asshole,” he spat as the anxiety subsided, pushing Blaine off him and staggering to his feet.

“Just came to see what was taking you so long,” Blaine said, slinging Kurt’s backpack over one shoulder as Kurt brushed himself off.

“We’re in a fucking maze and I got fucking lost,” Kurt retorted, and tugged his jacket straight with a huff.

Undeterred, Blaine simply took Kurt’s hand and led him out of the dead end. As they made two more left turns and then a right, Blaine almost jogging in his apparent eagerness, Kurt sent up a silent thank you that, even in the bleakest of places, Blaine always managed to find him.

The picnic Blaine had set up was a sight that took Kurt’s breath away. He’d laid out two blankets in an artful, overlapping diamond formation, at the center of which was the brown paper bag of groceries they’d gotten from the Whole Foods in Oklahoma City. Next to it was a small stack of plates and cups, along with a bottle of hard cider. The picturesque setting was surrounded by tiny votive candles, set at intervals around the perimeter of the square.

“So am I off the hook?” Blaine murmured, squeezing Kurt’s hand as he took it all in.

“I—how did you have time to do all this?” Kurt asked, swallowing the declaration of love that rose in the back of his throat, clamoring to get out like a new butterfly struggling to emerge from a cocoon.

“Well, uh… I sort of—looked at the maze on Google Earth…”

“You planned this? For me?”

Blaine shrugged, absently scratching at the back of his neck. “I figured since we can’t spend Thanksgiving with our families—“

Kurt cut him off with a swift kiss, whispering against his lips, “You’re my family.”

Blaine shifted on his feet, shooting him an uncharacteristically shy, bitten-lipped smile and gesturing toward the picnic. “Shall we?”

When they were seated, Kurt between Blaine’s legs and Blaine’s arms around his waist, he pulled the grocery bag closer and found that Blaine had already made up the turkey and cranberry sandwiches Kurt had suggested that morning. He passed one back to Blaine, and carefully unwrapped his own to take a bite.

“Oh my god, these are perfect,” he got out around a moan, the cranberry bursting sweet and sharp across his tongue and bringing out the flavor of the turkey.

“They are pretty good, even if I do say so myself,” Blaine agreed.

“Oh, hey—music?” Kurt asked, the thought suddenly occurring to him that he’d never followed F’s [latest YouTube link](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/62286979186). Setting down his sandwich for a moment and retrieving his phone, he held it down and out of Blaine’s sight to tap the link, murmuring, “Marcie sent me a link to something. Brace yourself in case it’s awful.”

But it was far from awful—a soft, acoustic song with a gently uplifting intro that made a sense of fleeting contentedness settle over Kurt like a warm blanket.

“I know this song!” Blaine said brightly, swaying a little from side to side.

Kurt cleared his throat. “Sing it for me?”

 _“In the morning when I wake, and the sun is coming through,”_ Blaine began, _“Oh, you fill my lungs with sweetness, and you fill my head with you.”_

The song was about a love not yet cast in iron and left to cool, about words unspoken and truths unconfessed; Kurt knew exactly why F, whoever they were, had chosen to send it his way. The nudging from all sides was growing unbearable, the repeated instruction one that he couldn’t bring himself to follow under the weight of his own fear. 

Instead, everything feeling the bittersweet side of too right, he picked up the chorus and ooh’d his way through in a harmony to complement Blaine’s smooth tenor. They sounded good together.

When the song’s last bars faded and they were left in the silence of night, candles flickering at the base of the hedge walls and casting them in a cage of shadows, Kurt twisted in Blaine’s arms and kissed the corner of his mouth.

“Happy Thanksgiving, sweetheart,” Blaine said softly.

“Happy Thanksgiving, B.”

 

**Distance: 8,848 miles**

*

**Day 069: Saturday 24th November, 2012  
Tipping (Nebraska)**

_“Hold it right there, Blaine Anderson.”_

_“I was just inches from a clean getaway!”_

_“I… Wait; I know this._ Terms of Endearment?”

 

The neon lights buzzed, flickering in and out of their bright luminescence almost in time with the strobe lighting over the dance floor, and Blaine sipped his beer slowly, forearms on the railing of The Max’s upper level as he surveyed the crowd. He could see Kurt below, swaying in the center of the packed dance floor with a stranger wrapped around him. Every so often, Kurt would glance up at Blaine and smirk—it was all for show. Blaine knew Kurt was his, and though a twinge of jealousy was puddled in his gut, he paid it no mind.

Tackling Kurt around the waist in the middle of a dark and pretty spooky maze wasn’t exactly planned, but hearing him say those words— _Yes, Dad. I love Blaine, too—_ had caused an abrupt about-turn in Blaine’s mood. The pedestal suddenly hadn’t seemed so tall.

No longer were his feelings a weight dragging behind him—now, they were an anchor, and he was biding his time. He was sure of his feelings, and he was sure of Kurt’s, but what he wasn’t sure of was how it was all going to be reconciled. It had to come to a head sooner or later, and he was growing more and more certain that, with the words almost constantly on the tip of his tongue, he would be the one to address it.

But he could wait. Kurt was an expert at dodging danger, and what they had was still cloaked in it. Blaine wasn’t about to back him into a corner; being on the road with nowhere to run except twenty feet away, it would simply be using the situation to his advantage.

Taking another sip of his beer, his eyes roved the interior of the club. He couldn’t imagine that there was any place in Omaha better for the LGBT crowd—or anyone, really, taking into account the ratio of obviously straight couples littered across the dance floor—to blow off steam on a Saturday night. The place was expansive, with different rooms playing different genres of music; the cover was low; the drinks were cheap. And the music itself… The DJ in this room was playing a mix of dance and pop, and—with the exception of an occasional foray into nineties classics, of which the currently playing [_Groove Is In The Heart_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/62287101236) was one—he seemed to know exactly what the people of Omaha wanted: music to lose themselves to.

The next time Blaine glanced down, Kurt was nowhere to be seen. He drained the contents of his bottle, left his spot, and made his way downstairs to the bar to wait for Kurt to come back to him—which, sooner or later, he always did. Blaine could count on at least that much.

Just as he was accepting another beer from the bartender, a familiar hand settled over his own. Kurt tipped the bottle to his own mouth and drank deeply, eyes on Blaine as he swallowed.

“Having fun out there?” Blaine asked, voice raised over the music, and Kurt smiled, leaning closer.

“I swear to God, that guy must have a dick about the size of that building we saw yesterday,” he replied, and Blaine chuckled. He could already tell that the ‘Penis of the Plains,’ as native Nebraskans referred to it, was going to be a running joke for years to come.

“Did he warn you, at least?” Blaine asked nonchalantly. “Because that’s the kind of thing you have to warn a guy about.”

Kurt tucked a finger beneath Blaine’s chin and answered him with a kiss before turning his back to the bar and leaning on his elbows. Blaine’s eyes swept downward to his long legs, the heel of one foot tapping to the beat.

“Come on,” Kurt said after a moment, fingers wrapping around Blaine’s wrist. “This song always makes me want to move.”

They wound and pushed their way through the crowd together, the press of bodies swallowing them and pushing them flush as they walked with the beat. Once Kurt had found them a spot, he looped one arm around Blaine’s waist, the fingers of his free hand playing with Blaine’s tie as he bit his lip and shimmied his shoulders back and forth.

“You’re in a good mood,” Blaine observed with a grin.

Kurt leaned down, saying directly into Blaine’s ear, “I’m dancing with you. Of course I’m in a good mood.”

“What, that other guy wasn’t keeping you happy?” Blaine joked.

“You’ve got _moves,_ remember?” Kurt answered, before scrunching his face and shooting him a look. “Too soon?”

Blaine shook his head; Delaware was far enough in the rear view that they could laugh about it. “Speaking of moves, mister,” he said, “I haven’t seen the patented Kurt Hummel shimmy since senior prom.”

“The classics never go out of style,” Kurt quipped, furrowing his brow and circling his hips into Blaine’s.

Blaine’s hands slid around to Kurt’s ass, giving back as good as he was getting. If either of them left this dance floor without an uncomfortable hard-on, it would be a miracle.

“Have you ever thought about being tied up?” Kurt said into his ear, quite unexpectedly; Blaine groaned and dropped his head to Kurt’s shoulder. Kurt chuckled, and asked, “Should I take that as a yes?”

“Okay, A) where did that even come from, and B) do we have anything in the R.V.?”

“It was just something I was thinking about last night. I might have a pair of handcuffs somewhere.”

“You don’t need to tell me why,” Blaine managed, turning his head and grazing the line of Kurt’s neck with his teeth.

When he raised his head again, it was to see the lights coming up before dropping straight back down; he caught the briefest, arresting glimpse of irises awash in stormy blue. It was the same shade that Blaine now associated with those moments when Kurt’s breathing would speed up right before he came.

“What about some classic Blaine moves?” Kurt asked with a nudge, pulling Blaine back to himself. “Because I remember a certain sixteen-year-old version of you jumping on the desks in Mrs. Beck’s History class, singing Robin Thicke to that poor kid—“

“There aren’t any desks in here,” Blaine interrupted smoothly, his finger against Kurt’s lips.

Kurt twisted his head away, put his mouth to Blaine’s ear and rolled his earlobe between his teeth. In a low voice that Blaine struggled to hear over the music, he sang, _“When I get you, you’ll know, babe…”_

“Shut up,” Blaine groaned, turning to catch Kurt’s lips in a filthy, open-mouthed kiss.

As the electric intensity of Goldfrapp’s [_Strict Machine_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/62287619365) coiled its way through the crowd toward them, strong hands bruised their grasp into Blaine’s hips, and he found himself being turned around to face the rest of the clubbers.

Shivering despite his sky-rocketing body heat, Blaine dropped his head back to rest on Kurt’s shoulder and turned his head to speak directly into his ear. On an inhale, he caught the scent of Hugo Boss intermingled with a tang of sweat, and as Kurt’s arms crept around his middle to pull him closer, he barely held back a groan of approval. ”This definitely isn’t how we did it at prom,” he finally said, reaching back to cup his fingers to the nape of Kurt’s neck.

"What do you want tonight?" Kurt purred. There was a deep, thrilling undertone to his voice and Blaine pressed his forehead to the heat of Kurt’s neck, body becoming more and more relaxed as he found the pattern of the beat and gave himself over to it. Kurt’s fingertips slid between the buttons of Blaine’s shirt, contracting and pressing into the skin of his torso, and he hooked two fingers into a belt loop to pull Blaine even closer, almost as if he was trying to fuse and meld them into a single entity, one made up of a symbiotic, rhythmic give and take. They moved together as the song continued, the bass running dirty and low and so synthesized that it kept them suspended in surroundings of nothing but the feeling of body on body. "Tell me what you want."

Blaine wound his fingers up into Kurt’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp and tugging so that Kurt met his gaze. He circled his hips back in time with the two sweeps of bass that preceded the second bridge, thrilling at his own approximation of _wonderful electric_ as it set his every nerve aflame with Kurt’s full mouth inching closer, closer, closer until his eyes blurred and shuttered, because this was what Blaine wanted.

He wanted the feeling of the firm, assured body moving in time with his own. He wanted the surprising and welcome gentility of the first kiss, and then for it to turn to pure filth soon after. He wanted the dance floor to momentarily swim beneath his feet as Kurt flipped him back around so that they faced one another, lips breaking apart before crushing together once more. He wanted these worshipping hands running the lines and planes of him, hairs standing on end as he surrendered and moaned and poured heat into a kiss that seared him with its obscenity. He wanted this contact, this touch, this sensation of his axis tilting further and further forward.

"I want you," he all but groaned into Kurt’s ear after one last sweep of his tongue along Kurt’s lower lip, eyes opening into sharper focus with the song’s fade into a punchy remix of Robyn’s _[With Every Heartbeat](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/62563529409)._

 _Not this song,_ Blaine almost whined aloud. He couldn’t have this song ringing in his ears when he’d only just found his footing in this crazy mindfuck of a situation.

Kurt tensed against him and mouthed, _Come with me._ Blaine happily took Kurt’s hand and left his thoughts on the dance floor. The song followed them, however, as Kurt led him from the main room and out through the main hallway to the doors of the nightclub complex. They were running, taking a right as soon as they were outside. Kurt pulled him into a narrow, dark alley, and Blaine hesitated halfway with Kurt’s hand still tangled up in his own. It was starting to rain, and he took in deep lungfuls of freezing air to soothe his racing heart and the rush of blood in his ears before it all continued on its journey south.

"Hey," Kurt said softly, thumb rubbing back and forth over Blaine’s knuckles as he took a step forward. Kurt closed the space between them and tilted Blaine’s chin upward with a gentle hand, and Blaine felt a ghost of breath exhaled across his lips just before Kurt recaptured his mouth in a slow, deep kiss.

 _“Maybe we can make it happen, baby,”_ Blaine heard from inside, his mind filling in what was muffled through brick and mortar. _“We could keep trying but things will never change.”_

It was mere moments until the heavens truly opened overhead; the rain fell in fat drops onto his skin and Blaine fell with them, giving himself over entirely. He pressed his palms into the small of Kurt’s back to pull him in closer, and god—he could have cried with the rightness of it all: Kurt’s lips reaffirming a daily claim; Kurt’s body pressing tightly against him; Kurt’s love coursing into his own bloodstream.

“Okay?” Kurt breathed, and Blaine nodded quickly.

Grinning, Kurt curved his palm to the back of Blaine’s head and pushed him back against the rough brick wall, swallowing down the gasping whisper of breath that Blaine let out.

_“Good enough to waste some time. Tell me, would it make you happy, baby?”_

Blaine screwed his eyes shut in an attempt to keep everything but Kurt locked out of his mind. He’d been growing steadily and uncomfortably harder ever since being on the dance floor, but it only registered now, as Kurt’s hands—wet with the rain that ran across his skin in rivulets—came to rest on the buckle of his belt and Blaine’s hips automatically pushed forward.

Seemingly spurred on by the silent encouragement, Kurt made quick work of Blaine’s belt and the button fly of his jeans, yanking them to mid-thigh as he dropped to his knees. Blaine hissed at the sudden cold of the raindrops hitting his newly exposed flesh, his skin so heated that he was surprised when they didn’t simply sizzle away into nothingness. Kurt wrapped hot, damp fingers around him and glanced up from beneath thick, wet eyelashes.

Blaine bit his lip when Kurt’s mouth sank over the head of his dick, his back arching forward into the contact. The front of his shirt was freezing against his blood-warmed skin, and as Kurt pulled off slowly, teeth lightly grazing the length of him, his hips canted forward to search out more of the blissful heat of Kurt’s mouth. He watched as Kurt smiled and licked his lips, glancing up at him with a positively wolfish gleam in his eyes. It was only a second after Blaine closed his eyes that he felt himself being enveloped by that same heat, the fast and rhythmic push and drag of Kurt’s tongue along his shaft sparking simmering flames beneath the surface of his skin, and he carded his fingers through Kurt’s sopping hair before curling them into a fist and beginning to fuck Kurt’s mouth in short, shallow bursts.

Blaine dropped his chin to his chest and his eyes locked on Kurt’s, a dark thrill coursing through his veins in a heady undercurrent. Kurt grabbed him by the hips once more, pulling Blaine forward to fuck his mouth harder and deeper, and Blaine let out a guttural groan, watching himself pump between Kurt’s flushed lips. He knew he wouldn’t last long like this, with the constant cold of the rain that trickled from his scalp down the line of his neck sending chills shooting up and down his spine. He could feel the pressure already beginning to mount, a trembling in his thighs that only got stronger with every gentle rake of Kurt’s teeth, every obscene moan that resonated throughout each cell of his body, every time that he caught Kurt’s gaze still zeroed on him, his eyes so dark that they were almost ebony.

He felt the rush building fast, almost a tangible thing that he could have reached out to touch, and he gave the fistful of Kurt’s hair he was still gripping two quick tugs.

Kurt surged forward, pinning Blaine back against the wall, and the sharp flare of impact in his lower back was what sent him tumbling over the edge, releasing his hold on Kurt’s hair and scrabbling for purchase on the brick. As his orgasm tore through him, he cried out in a litany of abandoned obscenities that were consumed by the open sky.

When it all became too much, Blaine raised one heavy arm and dragged his fingertips along the side of Kurt’s neck, and he pulled off with one final, wet pop. Hands almost numbed from the cold and the aftershocks running through him, he dragged Kurt up by the shoulders of his sweater and kissed him languidly, open-mouthed and whimpering at the taste of himself on Kurt’s tongue.

Kurt chuckled as they broke apart and Blaine pitched forward, dropping his forehead to rest on Kurt’s shoulder as he tucked himself back inside his jeans with still-shaking fingers.

"That—your fucking _mouth,”_ Blaine mumbled, feeling a rush of warmth as Kurt rubbed his upper arms. ”Where did you learn to give head like that?”

"Practice," Kurt answered with a self-satisfied grin.

“Can we…? I’m soaking.”

“Plenty of dry clothes in the R.V. A bed, too. And a couch, a chair, a floor, a shower…” Kurt said, taking a step back and holding out his hand, giving Blaine an expectant look.

Without hesitating for a single moment, Blaine slid his slick fingers between Kurt’s. As they headed out onto Jackson Street, he saw a group of girls practically falling out of the club onto the street, all singing at the top of their lungs, _“And it hurts with every heartbeat.”_

 _But this doesn’t hurt anymore,_ Blaine realized. Blinking rain out of his eyes, he wondered, _is it almost time?_

He was distracted by the flash of cab headlights turning the corner a few blocks up; just as he raised his arm to flag it down, Kurt pulled him close to kiss him, slow and indescribably sweet, and Blaine felt it all the way down to his toes. He almost forgot about the cab, but the rain lifted just enough for the sound of the approaching engine to slice its way into his muddled consciousness. He broke the kiss to fling out his arm and shout, ”Taxi!”

Kurt held the door open for him to climb inside, and once they were settled, directed the driver to the Walmart Supercenter on South 72nd with barely so much as a grimace. When the cab pulled away, windshield wipers beating dully against the rushing rain, he whispered in Blaine’s ear, “So what do you have planned for me?”

“Well… I hear there’s a bed…” Blaine began, fingers trailing the length of Kurt’s thigh.

“There is,” Kurt confirmed, voice a thick rasp.

“And a couch, a chair, a floor, a shower… Possibly even handcuffs.”

“God, just tell me.”

“Sweetheart,” Blaine said, cupping Kurt’s jaw and taking his bottom lip between his teeth. He pulled off slowly, and told him, “You have no idea.”

 

**Distance: 9,167 miles**


	8. Chapter 8

**Day 071: Monday 26th November, 2012  
We Were Never Here (South Dakota)**

_“How about_ Armageddon?”

_“We’d definitely hit your Bruce Willis kink.”_

_“Blaine, Bruce Willis being hot is not a kink. It’s Bruce Willis being hot.”_

 

Kurt was _flying._

Not literally, of course—he wasn’t even driving fast enough to get a speeding ticket—but his mood was so light that it felt like he was barely touching the ground. He had [_Poppiholla_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/62563736241) playing on repeat to soundtrack his journey along US-16A, and was grinning like a buffoon as he passed a sign that read, _Mt. Rushmore, EXIT 2 MILES._ Although it was cold, it was a beautiful and clear day with only a few scattered clouds darkening the horizon to his left, and as he drove, he was surrounded by trees and hilly peaks that rolled and undulated as far as he could see on either side of the curving highway.

And everything was capped with a blanket of pure white snow.

Still exhausted from an almost solid eight hours of driving the previous day, Blaine was napping in the bedroom. Looking at it on a map, the route was a fairly straightforward one, but the post-Thanksgiving traffic had been hell—Kurt had never heard Blaine curse so much outside of the bedroom. To top it all off, Blaine had risen at dawn to warm the R.V.’s engine before heading out to clear off the thick layer of snow that had settled over her during the night.

Kurt pulled into the left lane as he passed the half-mile exit sign, and followed the road beneath an arching, wooden-framed bridge. His smile stretched from ear to ear; Mount Rushmore was one of the great American monuments he’d always wanted to see, and he couldn’t believe that he was finally getting to do it. If Blaine wasn’t already up by the time they arrived, Kurt resolved to kiss him awake.

Passing through the saloon-fronted stores of a small strip mall in Keystone, Kurt could tell that he was getting close. Around thirty minutes earlier, he’d opened his blog app and set up a new video post, and now he brought his phone out of sleep, adjusted its angle in the cup holder so that it was tilted to capture his profile, and hit the red button to begin recording.

“Good afternoon!” he called brightly, pushing his sunglasses further up his nose and inclining his head slightly more toward the phone. “Followers, friends… I’m actually not sure what I’m supposed to call you guys… It’s day seventy-one and this latest exciting video diary is coming to you from South Dakota, where it’s cold, clear, and beautiful—and the best part? There’s snow _everywhere._

“I’m usually stationary, I know, but today I thought it might be fun for you to witness what I’m sure is going to be a ridiculously over-the-top reaction when I first see Mount Rushmore,” Kurt continued. He paused momentarily as he drove through a tunnel carved out of rock, and continued, “I’ve wanted to see it ever since I was, oh… Seven, maybe? So this is—this is big, for me.

“I’m just…” he trailed off, shaking his head and smiling to himself a little. “You know, I think there are times in every friendship, every relationship, where you have to kind of just sit back and let everything go but what you have. And right now, that’s what I’m trying to do. Because if what happens on the road trip stays on the road trip, then doesn’t it kind of follow that whatever happens should be amazing? I think—“

Kurt’s thought was cut abruptly short as he passed a line of snow-capped trees and, for the first time, glimpsed Mount Rushmore. It stood proud and majestic, the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln overlooking the sprawl of the Black Hills, and Kurt felt as if the breath had been stolen from his body.

“Oh my god,” he whispered.

He took the remaining turns of the road silently and as quickly as he could, and within what seemed like a mere clutch of breath-held moments, he was pulling the R.V. to a stop in the visitors’ parking lot, as close as he could get. Slumped back against his seat, he did nothing but smile for a full minute. The cinematographer in him wanted to examine every tiny detail, search out every flaw and imperfection in the time-weathered rock, and celebrate them all.

“Are you freaking out?”

Blaine’s voice was a sleepy sort of wry, startling Kurt out of his reverie. He glanced up to find Blaine standing by his side, knuckles brushing his arm as he took in the spectacle for himself. Forgetting all about the ongoing recording, he reached up to pull Blaine down for a sound kiss, unable to help smiling and giggling a little against his lips.

“You’re freaking out,” Blaine sing-songed, bunching the cuffs of his hoodie in his hands and stretching up onto his toes.

He drew Kurt’s gaze like he was the sun to Kurt’s moon, and in turn moved around him as if he were caught in Kurt’s gravity. Only a red blinking light in Kurt’s periphery distracted him, and he hastily stopped the recording, inwardly cursing himself for using the instant capture feature that would upload straight to his blog. He hadn’t exactly intended to be caught on camera making out with his—with Blaine.

“Come on,” Kurt said, getting to his feet and tugging on Blaine’s sleeve. “You need boots, a jacket, and gloves. It’s below freezing out there, and I want a closer look.”

It wasn’t long before they were both bundled up in winter gear, walking arm in arm through the eerily silent, empty parking lot and beneath the square stone archway onto Grand View Terrace.

Their boots crunched through the snow, and Kurt could feel a sense of giddy delight building inside him—winter was _his_ season, and snow was his favorite. More so than any horribly commercialized holiday, there was something about snow that carried with it a sense of magic; there was no peaceful quiet like that of when snow was falling, and it left in its wake a ground reflecting so much light that, as a young child, Kurt had sometimes wondered if he was walking on the sky.

“Well… I guess it _is_ a Monday at the end of November,” Blaine commented, gesturing back to the parking lot as they passed between pillars adorned with the state flags. “Although wouldn’t you think that people would take advantage of this particular holiday to be all patriotic?”

“I think most people just want to get home and away from obnoxious family members,” Kurt replied blithely.

“Like Great-Aunt Mildred?”

“She made me eat sprouts, Blaine. They taste like farts.”

“Oh, I’m well aware. Don’t you remember Sproutgate 2005? I didn’t talk to Cooper for almost a month,” Blaine said, shuddering in a way that Kurt knew had nothing to do with the cold. He stopped himself from going on to say that Cooper might have actually noticed Blaine’s silent treatment if they were in the habit of speaking more frequently than every six weeks.

They came to a stop before the low wall overlooking the amphitheater, and as Kurt stood gazing up at the mountain towering above him, he caught sight of Blaine brushing snow from one end of a stone bench. He closed the distance between them and took the seat Blaine offered with an exaggerated, gentlemanly bow. Before he could move to clear a space next to him, he found himself with a lapful of Blaine: a warm, grounding weight and an arm curled around his shoulders like it was nothing.

Maybe it _was_ nothing.

“Are you still freaking out?” Blaine asked, glancing up at the mountain and then down at Kurt. It always struck him how oddly nice it was to have to tip his head back in order to meet Blaine’s gaze.

“I was never freaking out.”

“You were freaking out a little bit.”

“Fine, I was freaking out,” Kurt conceded. After a moment, he added, “Thank you.”

“For what?” Blaine asked, brow furrowed.

“For bringing me along,” Kurt said. “I mean, who knows when I would’ve gotten to see this otherwise?”

“I told you, I wouldn’t have left without you,” Blaine said quietly, his thumb burrowing beneath Kurt’s scarf and rubbing the skin at the nape of his neck. The moment hung between them, and Kurt could tell that they were both wondering the same thing: _What if we hadn’t left Maine? What would we be right now?_

To break the silence, Kurt returned his gaze to the mountain and said, “I’d love to shoot here. Wouldn’t you?”

“Set the scene for me,” Blaine said.

 _Two best friends on a road trip,_ Kurt thought. _Sitting in this very spot and feeling like right now, right at this moment, they’re exactly where they’re meant to be._

“Post-apocalypse,” he finally replied, and Blaine’s eyes widened a little. An idea occurred to him, and as surreptitiously as he could, he moved his hand behind him and slowly began collecting snow. “I wanna see it filthy and neglected, the entire place in ruins. The terrace back there is all overgrown, and the whole place is covered in snow, like it is now. I’d want to really juxtapose the innocence against the horror, you know?”

“Go on,” Blaine said, nodding.

“And there are two guys—“

“Naturally.”

“—all bruised up, guns slung across their backs, looking like they’ve never seen snow before,” Kurt said, looking out over the wall and seeing powdery puffs of it falling from the boughs of trees up on the hill.

“What happens next?” Blaine prompted.

“They’re standing at the wall, shoulders slumped because it’s cold and they’re exhausted and haven’t found shelter yet,” Kurt continued, nudging Blaine off so that he could stand up. They crossed to the wall together, Kurt’s snowball packed tight in his gloved hand. He put a few paces between them, knowing he was about to begin World War Three. “It’s quiet—all they can hear is the wind howling through the trees, and that’s when a song begins to play. Barely there to begin with, but getting louder—and then one of the guys grins at the other…”

“And then what?”

“Duck and cover!” Kurt yelled at the top of his voice, turning and hurling the snowball toward Blaine. It exploded against the front of his dark pea coat, leaving a splatter of white on Blaine’s chest and a comically shocked expression on his face. “What, like you really weren’t expecting that?”

Blaine brushed himself off and drew his shoulders back. “Battle stations, Hummel. Because you’re going down.”

“May the best man win!” Kurt called over his shoulder as he took off across the terrace, running for what little cover that the Avenue of Flags could provide him. Snowball fights were no laughing matter between him and Blaine—the last one they’d had, back in their second year of college, had gone on for nearly an hour before Blaine had finally given up and grudgingly conceded victory.

He ducked behind the third pillar along the avenue and crouched down, rapidly taking handfuls of snow and packing them as tightly as he could. He had a title to defend, and he wasn’t going to give it up quietly.

“Incoming!” Blaine called, and Kurt glanced past the corner of the pillar just in time to see Blaine leaping through the air and throwing a snowball at him mid-jump.

It missed him by a few inches and Kurt hid himself behind the pillar once more, grinning with his back to the stone. “Seriously, Blaine, did you learn _nothing_ from _Night at the Museum 2?”_

No response came, and aside from the brief sound of Blaine’s boots crunching past him through the snow, it was silent. Kurt gathered a snowball in each hand and cautiously peeked out from behind the pillar, but Blaine was nowhere to be seen. Silently congratulating himself on having the forethought not to wear his other jacket, which was dry clean only, he stepped fully out from between the pillars and waited.

“Come on, Anderson!” he called. “I’m not gonna wait around all day while you get up the courage to face me!”

A snowball hit the side of his thigh as Blaine darted, quick as a flash, between two pillars to Kurt’s right. He swore under his breath and followed, but Blaine had already run out into the open space of the avenue. With a quick smirk down at the pile of snowballs Blaine had left behind, he lobbed the ones he held at Blaine—both hitting him square on the shoulder—and gathered up three more.

“You sounded exactly like your dad just then, you know!” Blaine declared as he scurried off toward Kurt’s original hiding spot.

“Yeah, and look how his snowball fight with _your_ dad ended up! Epic Hummel Smackdown!” Kurt shot back, dogging Blaine’s footsteps and following him back out onto the terrace. As soon as he’d stopped zigzagging, Kurt took two of his three shots, landing one on his back and the other on his calf.

Blaine turned around to throw one back, and it hit Kurt smack on the jaw. He hissed and staggered backward—the snowball had been packed tight and it stung like a bitch. Blaine was by his side almost immediately.

“Fuck, are you okay?” he asked, gloved hands cupping Kurt’s face and tilting it upward so he could see.

“You never learn,” Kurt reprimanded him, taking his remaining snowball and crushing it into Blaine’s hair. He laughed at Blaine’s grim expression, pressed a firm kiss to his mouth and took off again.

He didn’t get far, however, before Blaine grabbed him around the waist and tackled him to the ground, landing on top of him in the snow and saying with a smirk, “Yield, Hummel.”

“Never,” he said, softening his voice and his gaze. He’d lost enough fights in the past through Blaine employing dirty tactics that, if this was about to end, he was going to get the parting shot. Slowly, he slid his wrists from Blaine’s loose grip to twine their fingers together. The cold was seeping into his hair and through his clothes, and as he looked past Blaine hovering above him, he saw that the sky had turned an ominous shade of gray.

When Blaine twisted around to see what he was looking at, Kurt took the opportunity to hook his leg around Blaine’s hips and roll them over, hands still clasped together. Blaine’s lips were cold, but warmed Kurt nonetheless when he leaned down for a slow kiss. “Yield, Anderson,” he whispered, his breath coming out in a bloom of white.

“Fine, keep your stupid title,” Blaine grumbled, shivering, but there was a quirk at the corner of his mouth that betrayed him. “Can we get up, now? I’m freezing. And it’s starting to snow.”

By the time they’d gotten to their feet and finished brushing themselves off, it was already coming down in fat, heavy flakes, and Kurt was looking forward to getting inside and feeling his hands burn as they warmed up. But just for a second, he looked at Blaine in his pea coat with snow settling into his curls, and remembered him in a short-sleeved t-shirt, standing on a wall in Florida and kissing him like his life depended on it.

“I’m freezing,” Blaine repeated, his shoulders up by his ears and hands buried in his pockets.

“Let’s stay here for a second,” Kurt said, quickly unbuttoning his coat and wrapping it around them both.

“Okay, Bridget,” Blaine said wryly, pushing his arms beneath the thick wool of Kurt’s coat and squeezing his waist.

“Actually, this would make me Mark,” Kurt corrected him with a grin. He glanced around, watching the snow settling around them. Their tracks were already beginning to disappear. “Listen.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. Isn’t this perfect?”

Blaine ducked his head, kissed Kurt’s jaw where it still stung, and hummed in agreement.

The moment was broken by Kurt’s phone chiming with a new email, and he kept one arm wrapped around Blaine as he drew it out of his pocket and read the message over Blaine’s shoulder.

 _So that’s the infamous Blaine? He looks like a keeper, but if you’re_ really _more for enjoying the moment, set a few aside to listen to this. –F._

Kurt immediately tapped open the accompanying YouTube link, excited and frustrated in equal measure at the ongoing mystery of just who F was, and what they were trying to accomplish. There was a tinge of embarrassment that he could feel coloring his cheeks, like he’d been caught on camera doing something far more risqué than kissing, but as Coldplay’s [_Life In Technicolor II_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/62563862937) began to play, it’s uplifting introduction swept away all vestiges of anything other than simple happiness.

“Another one from Marcie?” Blaine asked, and Kurt nodded as he unwrapped Blaine from his embrace. He didn’t like lying, but if he told the truth he would have to tell all of it, and there was no way he could stomach revealing the one place he had left to go when he could no longer make sense of himself.

“Let’s go,” he said, and took Blaine’s hand.

As they made their way across the terrace toward the Avenue of Flags, he glanced toward the pillar he’d hidden behind—his snowballs were already buried. The snow was falling in thick sheets, catching in his eyelashes, and he spared only one glance backward. The footprints they’d left by the wall were almost filled in, and the bench was covered again.

“Almost looks like we were never here,” Blaine said quietly.

“It does,” Kurt agreed, wondering once again, _What if we weren’t?_

 

**Distance: 9,713 miles**

*

**Day 072: Tuesday 27th November, 2012  
Anchors (North Dakota)**

_“Some slim pickings right there.”_

_“We’ve discussed the Southern accent, Blaine.”_

_“Ugh, fine._ Fargo?”

 

“So... Just what is it about this place you’re taking us?” Blaine asked, reclining in his passenger seat as they cruised along US-85 at a comfortable speed. They were on their way to Williston, North Dakota, a small town that Kurt had been adamant they had to visit, even though it would result in needing to park overnight at a Walmart.

“Ooh, Georgia,” Kurt said, pointing to the SUV in the passing lane, before answering Blaine’s question, “It’s where I got the paperweights.”

“What paperweights?”

“The ones I have on my desk. You kept fiddling with them when we first started planning this trip.”

“How do—oh, look, _another_ South Dakota—how do you always remember things like that?” Blaine asked, as he always did when Kurt presented clear recollection of even the tiniest details.

“Cinematographers have to be good with details,” Kurt sing-songed his stock response. “But, um... Do you remember when Dad flew us all out to Bismarck for Grandma Betty's funeral?”

“Yeah, the week before graduation,” Blaine clarified, pitching the end of his sentence into a question. Kurt nodded, scratching at his shoulder and licking his lips; Blaine turned sideways in his seat, leaning his cheek against the warm leather of the headrest—Kurt had never told him what had happened during their trip.

“She—in her will, she left us instructions for this ridiculous scavenger hunt, which was just like her. We ended up at this kitschy little art shop in Williston, and she told us that we had to get something to remember her by, instead of her leaving us something.”

“Why’d you choose the paperweights?” Blaine asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

“Well, they’re Tree of Life, and Grandma Betty spent her entire life here. Like she was rooted, or something. And she always kind of reminded me of Grandmother Willow in _Pocahontas,_ you know, talking in loose riddles and dishing out life advice like it was her sole purpose for existing,” Kurt said, his tone belying a fondness that his words did not.

Ignoring Kurt’s cry of “Wisconsin!” as he pointed through the windshield at a sleek Buick pulling slightly ahead of them, Blaine asked, “How much of her wisdom made it into your valedictorian speech?”

Kurt laughed. “None of it, actually. Although, I guess—I guess in a way, she was in it. The thing I said about people wanting us to be only one thing—that was how she was. I always felt like she was trying to categorize me, and it was infuriating.”

“God, you rehearsed that speech for weeks. Do you still remember it?”

“That’s like asking if _you_ remember Sam's monologue at the end of _The Two Towers—_ and don’t recite it right now, oh my god.”

“I wasn't going to,” Blaine shot back, sticking out his tongue for good measure. “I was going to ask you to recite yours.”

“Really?” Kurt asked, glancing at him sidelong. When Blaine nodded, he took a deep breath and flexed his hands around the steering wheel. “From the top?”

“From the top.”

“Okay, um... We’re always taught the importance of remembering where we started, and appreciating how far we’ve come,” Kurt began, cycling through the speech with none of the inflection Blaine remembered, but instead at a speed betraying the fact that he was trying to remember enough to get through it. “We can’t look at the end of an era, like this one, without going back to the beginning. And in the beginning, they told us to be individual, that diversity is good, that we have to make our own special music and sing our own special song. Okay, well—maybe that last one was just Mama Cass, but you know what I mean.

“My point is, somewhere along the way, we tend to forget all that,” Kurt continued, voice growing momentarily soft and his recitation slowing. Blaine found himself nodding along, just as he had while sitting in the front row at graduation, gazing up at his incredible best friend with a tassel swinging in the corner of his left eye. “We’re not told to, but we do it anyway. We become caught up in the everyday, in making sure that we fit into a nice, neat little box that we can slap a label on and show to the world. Because suddenly, when we got to high school, people only wanted us to be one thing: the cheerleader, the audiovisual geek, the stoner, the science nerd, the zero… In my case, the gay kid.

“After a while, I think a lot of us found those labels a comfort. Life was easy if we only had to be one thing. We could even group people together by their labels and judge them accordingly. And I see some of you side-eyeing me right now, but we all did it.

“The thing is… I’m looking at all of you in your caps and gowns, and I can’t remember a single one of your so-called labels. I don’t see anyone squeezed into a box or shoved to the side—I only see a graduating class of the people I’ve known since kindergarten, people I’ve grown up with and loved and fallen out with and—loved again,” Kurt recited, speeding up once more and tripping over the word ‘love.’ “You’re all sitting in front of me right now because you defied what everyone expected of you, what they labeled you as, and came here to be united.

“After we’ve said goodbye to each other, we’ll be going out into a world where more people will try to label us and put us into boxes. But I want you to remember this day, this beautiful day where for once, we were one. Where for once, if we wanted to be two things, three, five, fifty, a thousand—we felt like we could be all of them. Where we didn’t feel like we had to make other people happy, because we were here only for ourselves.

“My final advice to you, my fellow Class of ‘08 graduates, is to remember that. And when you leave today—please don’t forget to take yourselves out with you into the world, with whatever labels _you_ want.”

As Kurt finished, taking as much of an exaggerated Shakespearean bow as he could while driving, Blaine loudly applauded him, lost in memories of their senior year of high school, when things like being valedictorian mattered. It had been a good-natured race between them, and they’d been neck and neck until Blaine had caught the flu and missed three weeks of school—afterward, he’d never quite managed to drag his Physics grade back up.

“It was a kick-ass speech,” Blaine told him, and quite uncharacteristically, Kurt blew him a kiss.

Blaine caught it, and slowly lowered his hand back into his lap as he considered just how out of character Kurt had been acting since… Well, that was the thing: he could no longer remember when the shift had occurred. Perhaps it had been a gradual shift that he was only seeing now that he looked back at the beginning, like Kurt’s speech told him to.

“Texas,” Kurt pointed out quietly, and Blaine’s thoughts turned once again to Hugh’s offer of moving to New York to be part of their new outfit. After a few moments passed, Kurt broke the silence by saying, “You’ve gone quiet.”

“I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

“What would you say if I told you I was thinking about New York?” he asked, crossing his hands in his lap and thumbing at his index finger.

“I’d say tell me something I don’t know,” Kurt replied at length, his tone overly bright. “And I’d say that you should go for it.”

“I should—wait, really?”

“Mmhmm. What’s there to keep you in Maine?”

“Well, I—I…” Blaine trailed off, his thoughts short-circuiting before they made it to his mouth. _You,_ he wanted to say, though all at once he realized that he had no idea what Kurt’s plans even were beyond his long-held dream of ‘creating beautiful things.’ “What are you going to do? After we get back, I mean.”

Kurt opened his mouth but said nothing, and dismissed the question with a simple shrug. “Still figuring out that part.”

“Would you come to New York with me?” Blaine blurted, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. He quickly added, “I mean, don’t get me wrong—I love those guys, but I’d go crazy if I had to live with them. I’m gonna need a good roommate.”

“I don’t know, B,” Kurt said with a heavy sigh. “Honestly, I’m trying not to think too much about what’ll happen when we get back.”

“Why?”

“Being on the road like this, it’s… Kind of magical, don’t you think?”

“Of course.”

“I know it has to end, and I know that it _will,_ but… I just don’t want it to.”

“Me neither,” Blaine reassured him, reaching over and covering Kurt’s hand with his own. “You okay if I go surf for a bit?”

“The internet?”

“No, Kurt, the miles of choppy water currently surrounding us.”

“Well, who even says ‘surfing the internet’ anymore? But yes, fine, go,” Kurt said, waving him off, but before Blaine could exit the cab, Kurt took his arm and added, “I’ll think about it.”

Blaine made his way into the living area and fell back onto the couch with a sad smile on his face—he knew what “I’ll think about it” meant when Kurt said it. The deal was as good as off the table. But there was still time for them to figure everything out; he could feel the right moment to tell Kurt how he really felt growing closer, as if he were standing in the middle of train tracks that were just beginning to vibrate beneath his feet.

He killed a little time by catching up on news from back home, and guiltily sending a couple of short responses to emails that had been sitting in his inbox since before Louisiana. The thought of Louisiana made him itch to get back to Kurt’s side, and before he’d spent too long frustrated at the space between them, they were jumping out into a mostly-empty parking lot out front of a small strip mall.

He found himself hanging back a step, watching Kurt’s long legs take the sidewalk in stride, and at once he wondered, _What will I do if he doesn't come to New York?_

The thought made him swallow hard as he followed Kurt past the Economart and Country Floral. Blaine had experienced their relationship in both extremes, now, and he knew exactly which he preferred. Being without Kurt in any capacity would be like losing a vital piece of himself—had felt exactly like that his entire year abroad, in fact—but being without Kurt’s heart, however veiled it might currently be, was unthinkable.

“I… It didn’t look like this last time,” Kurt murmured as they came to a stop outside a storefront.

Woolgathering cut short, Blaine gazed up at the store and took it in. The wooden façade that covered the brickwork was painted entirely black, and the display in the front window was a selection of Ray Caesar paintings—surrealist images of women in various poses, some of them displaying animal characteristics and others completely abstract in their composition. The silver lettering above the storefront read _Moiety: Fine Art for the Discerning Collector._

It was the last place Blaine ever expected to find in Williston, North Dakota. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

“Yeah, _Moiety,”_ Kurt said, gesturing up to the sign. Blaine liked the way the word sounded when Kurt spoke it. “It’s the same place; it just looks completely different. Before, it was—well, almost the exact opposite; all kitschy and bright.”

“Do you wanna go?” Blaine asked, brushing his knuckles over Kurt’s elbow, the stiff canvas fabric of his jacket scratching against his skin.

“No… No, we came all this way,” Kurt answered with a sigh, and pulled the door open.

The interior of Moiety smelled strongly of sage and sandalwood. Its lighting was surprisingly dim for an art store—spotlights set at intervals along the ceiling cast fuzzy circles of yellow along the floor between aisles of postcard-size paintings. One wall was entirely taken up with a nighttime scene of winter-bare trees, and the glossy, dark stain of the floorboards made Blaine think of his father’s cabin at Saint Mary Lake, where they would be staying their three nights and two days in Montana. [A slow, echoing, piano-driven song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/64352288688) was playing over the speakers, and it lent an even darker atmosphere to the already dark store.

Moiety was a place entirely at odds with the other small stores along the strip mall, sticking out like a sore, bruised thumb, and when Blaine said as much, there was a dark chuckle from the back.

A tiny woman with graying hair appeared as if out of nowhere, thin-framed spectacles hanging from a chain around her neck and bare toes just peeking out from beneath her floor-length black velvet dress.

“That’s because we’re the only place with a modicum of culture in this backward town,” she said, her voice a thin and croaking rasp. As she approached them, the scent of cigarette smoke hung around her like a cloud. She looked them both from head to foot, and the crooked, toothy smile that twisted her mouth sent a shiver running the length of Blaine's spine. “What can I help you gentlemen with today?”

“I was here a few years ago,” Kurt began when Blaine remained silent, and from the corner of his eye, Blaine could see him drawing himself up a little straighter. “At least, I think I was. It looked completely different back then.”

The woman nodded, her eyes narrowing and her smile growing wider. “Yes, it _was_ very different. Why did you come?” she asked, but before waiting for an answer, she barreled on, “I took over from the old owners about a year ago, you see.”

Kurt hesitated a moment, seemingly thrown off by her odd pattern of speech. “I came to find something to remember my grandmother by, after she passed.”

“And what did you choose?” the woman asked, her gaze narrowing even further. She stepped closer to them both, her head tipped back as she looked Kurt in the eye. “The old owners were unaware of how an art shop such as this one should be run, you see. Very _unimaginative.”_

She paused to clear her throat, then, and Kurt said, “A paperweight with the Tree of Life.”

“Do you know what ‘moiety’ means?” she asked suddenly, turning her attention to Blaine. He shook his head quickly and felt an inexplicable disappointment in himself, as if he’d failed a test for which he’d been studying all week. “The owners didn’t, either. So laughable, all of the things they _didn't_ know. But I’m here, now.”

“Could you tell us what it means?” he asked.

“What _what_ means?”

“’Moiety.’”

“It means, ‘one of two equal parts,’” she told him, looking between them both. “You see? You see why they were so blind, why I had to take over?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, definitely,” Kurt broke in. “How could anyone _not_ see?”

The woman threw her hands up with an air of exasperation, then placed one on Kurt’s arm and fixed him with a gentler smile, one that almost looked kind. “You are welcome to browse,” she said, and then turned her gaze to Blaine. _“You_ must listen while you look. Take it in, you see?”

Blaine opened his mouth to ask what he should be listening for, but the woman simply pointed up, raising her eyes to the ceiling—for a moment, the song’s volume seemed to be amplified, as it would between snatches of dialogue in any given movie trailer, and Blaine finally understood.

“Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have books to balance,” she said, the fingers of her hand twitching in mid-air. Without another word, she excused herself and disappeared toward the back of the store again, passing through a heavy black curtain that swayed in her wake.

“What the fuck?” Kurt whispered, and Blaine instinctively stepped closer to him. “Seriously, what the _fuck?”_

“Was it just me or did that seem kind of… _Hills Have Eyes_ to you?” Blaine asked.

“It wasn’t just you.”

“Do you wanna get out of here?”

“Can we stay? Just for a couple minutes? I kind of…”

“What?”

Kurt waved his hand dismissively and averted his eyes to scan the store. “I had this idea that I’d get another paperweight here; one to remember our trip—if she even has any amongst all the dead flowers and animal bones."

“Okay,” Blaine said, nodding and gesturing down the aisle.

They made a quick circuit of the store, and among the long displays of dark, surrealist paintings they found various end shelves full of odd ornaments, a box of ornately jeweled pen and journal sets, and finally by the cash register, the paperweights they had been looking for.

There were heavy glass globes in all sizes, nestled within black boxes lined with white silk, and after a few seconds, Blaine watched as Kurt picked one up from the back of the shelf. It was clear as crystal, no bubbles or imperfections, and suspended within was a black, frosted silhouette of the United States.

“Oh my god,” Kurt whispered, holding it out to Blaine. “How perfect is this?”

“Pretty perfect,” he murmured.

Kurt hesitated by his side for a moment, then took the paperweight in its box to the cash register to wait for the old woman’s reappearance.

Blaine returned his gaze to the rest of the display. Most of the paperweights looked like something he could have found at Nightshade—the single ‘alternative’ store in Brunswick, where the vast majority of their high school’s goth and emo population shopped for their accessories. One of the globes in particular caught Blaine’s eye: a perfect likeness of a human skull, cast in obsidian. As his eyes lingered on it, he couldn’t help but shiver once again, and instead turned his attention to the paperweight sitting to its left: more of an oval in shape, and containing a single sprig of lilacs.

At once, he thought of Kurt’s mother and how, on his first visit to Kurt’s house after they’d met in the street, he’d noticed the basket of lilacs hanging from a hook on their porch. The basket had hung there for months after the car accident, the lilacs slowly dying and curling in on themselves.

Just as Blaine resolved to buy the paperweight for Kurt, the old woman reappeared from the back. She was silent as she rang up Kurt’s purchase and pulled a glossy black bag from behind the register, gently setting the paperweight inside.

Kurt thanked her and turned to Blaine, raising his eyebrows as if in relief.

“I’ll meet you outside,” Blaine said, nodding in the woman’s direction; Kurt briefly squeezed his arm as he passed by, seeming not to notice the box in Blaine’s hands.

He approached the register cautiously, the woman’s dark eyes boring into his with an intensity that made his hair stand on end.

“Just this,” he said, attempting to break the tension.

“Where did you find this?” she asked as she took the paperweight from him. “I told them to take all of it with them, you see. But they didn’t listen, and there was so much waste. Why did you choose this?”

 _Because it’s the least depressing thing in this entire store,_ Blaine thought, but bit his tongue. “My friend’s mom, she always loved lilacs.”

“She's dead?”

“Yes. When he was eight.”

“Restless and torn, you see,” the woman said, quite inexplicably.

“I beg your pardon?” Blaine asked, feeling more confused by the second.

The woman sighed with that same air of exasperation, and leaned over the counter to grab Blaine’s hand with a force he wouldn't have thought her capable. “How can you love someone like that? You didn’t _listen_ when I told you to.”

“How can I… What?” he asked weakly.

 _“’How do you love someone so restless and torn?’”_ the woman asked, pointing upward again, and suddenly it clicked into place—she must have been quoting the lyrics of the song.

Blaine paused, carefully considering his response as a wave of indignation crested over him, hot and furious. “With hope,” he said, and the woman released his hand with a scoff. “With _faith,”_ he continued as she rang up his purchase. Frustrated, he leaned over the counter and looked her straight in the eye. “With _everything that I am.”_

She regarded him coldly for a moment more, then shrugged as if to indicate that she was finished with him. He paid, took his black bag, and walked away from the counter in silence, anger and defensiveness putting a terrible weight into his step. How dare she? She didn’t know him, and she _certainly_ didn’t know the man he loved.

“That heart of yours. Did he steal it or did you give it?” he heard the woman ask in the second that his palm settled flat against the door’s silver push panel. He half-turned back toward her, and she was standing at the end of the aisle farthest back, looking at him with that almost kind smile. “I know that they’ll come back, you see. So I have to keep it everything it can be.”

“He stole it first, but I’ll give it over and over again if he’ll let me,” Blaine said quietly, dropping his gaze.

The expected reproachful response that already had him bristling never came, and when he looked back up, the woman was gone. Mentally shaking himself, he passed through the door and into the bright, cold sunshine outside. Kurt pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against and Blaine felt the residual anger drain from him. It left him almost dizzy, and Kurt seemed to sense it, taking his hand and leading him away from the store with a concerned glance.

“Are you okay?” he asked when they were halfway back to the R.V.

“Just… Really, really creeped out,” Blaine answered.

“What did you get?”

“Something for you.”

“Really?” Kurt asked. “What is it?”

“Surprise,” Blaine told him, swinging the bag in his free hand. “Do you wanna see now?”

“Ugh, let’s not talk about _seeing things,”_ Kurt said with a shudder, retrieving the keys to the R.V. from his pocket and unlocking the side door. He turned around as he climbed the first step and leaned down to press a dry kiss to the corner of Blaine’s mouth. “Come on. We’ve got a movie to watch and a Walmart to suffer.”

Blaine hesitated a moment before following him inside, sparing a single glance back at the storefront from across the still-empty parking lot.

 _With everything that I am,_ Blaine thought, feeling somehow imbued with more resolve than ever, than even before setting foot inside the dark walls of Moiety. Weighing the bag in his hand, he mused idly that, rather than buying the paperweight to honor a memory, perhaps he could use it instead to anchor a memory soon to be made.

 

**Distance: 10,072 miles**

*

**Day 074: Thursday 29th November, 2012  
Book of Revelations (Montana)**

_“Kurt, come_ on. _You_ still _haven’t watched it yet?”_

_“I… Was getting around to it.”_

_“Right.”_

 

“Hey, Blaine?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re pretty much fulfilling every single lumberjack fantasy I ever had right now.”

Blaine laughed as he wiped his forearm across his forehead and swung his axe to rest over his shoulder. “Lumberjacks, huh?”

Kurt smiled coyly, burying his hands in his pockets and descending the steps of the cabin. “We watched the _Wolverine_ movie together, remember?”

“Well, sure, but I just thought that was a Hugh Jackman thing,” Blaine replied.

“It's _always_ a Hugh Jackman thing,” Kurt said, “but in that particular instance, it was also a lumberjack thing.”

Blaine laughed again, bending to retrieve the last small log from the pile he had been working his way through for the past half hour; as he swung the axe over his head and brought it down to split the log clean in two, Kurt watched the muscles of his back and shoulders flex and contract beneath the thin cotton of his t-shirt.

“How are you not freezing right now?” he asked.

“Manual labor, working up a sweat, all that jazz,” Blaine said, swinging the axe one last time to bury it in the stump. He picked up the log basket and crossed his arms through the wicker handle, carrying it up the steps to the porch and nodding for Kurt to follow.

“I don't think I’d ever get used to this view,” Kurt murmured at the top, stepping closer to Blaine and feeling the body heat that poured off him in waves. “Thank you for showing me.”

Blaine’s arm slipped around his waist, pulling him closer as they stood on the porch, gazing out at the sun setting behind the mountains that bordered the placid water. He smelled of sweat and cologne and nature.

Their drive up the previous day had been brutally long but beautifully scenic, offset further by the fact that they had two nights to spend in Blaine's father's idyllic log cabin. After falling into bed, watching _Big Eden,_ and sleeping a solid twelve hours, they had both awakened refreshed enough to spend their day on a long walk around the area, taking in the picturesque views and frigid mountain air.

Upon their return, Kurt had taken the time to explore the cabin itself while Blaine set about chopping wood for the generous hearth in the living room. The cabin was seven hundred and sixty square feet of country charm the likes of which Kurt could only imagine finding in Montana, and even the exterior had him itching for a light meter and a handheld video camera. On the porch was an oversized wooden rocking chair, in which Kurt was categorically not picturing himself sitting while Blaine went on a run through the woods five, ten, fifteen years from now. Through the unassuming front door was a small living room that led into a rustic kitchen, all of the appliances concealed by panels matching the cabinetry, and upstairs was a loft bedroom with a tiny en suite.

No cell service, no internet, and only local stations on the TV. At the beginning of the trip, Kurt had thought it would be two days of board games, nature, and hell—now, he knew he couldn’t have been more wrong. It was perfect.

“I have something for you,” Blaine said, warm lips grazing Kurt's ear. “For both of us, actually.”

“Lead the way,” Kurt said with a shiver, and followed him inside.

As Blaine stacked a few logs in the open fireplace and set the kindling aflame beneath the grate, he said, “So… Don’t be mad.”

“Don't give me anything to be mad for,” Kurt quipped, removing his coat and perching on the arm of the chocolate brown leather couch.

Blaine chucked weakly. “I got us some pot.”

A grin slowly worked its way along the line of Kurt's lips. “Why would I be mad about—wait. _Where_ did you get pot?”

“I went out to stretch my legs while you were in the bathroom yesterday morning, and I noticed a bunch of guys—“

“Tell me you didn’t.”

“—in the parking lot, and one of them called me over—“

“Blaine, tell me you did _not_ get us Walmart marijuana.”

After wiping his hands off on his jeans, Blaine stood and pulled a small plastic baggie from his pocket. He held it between his finger and thumb, shaking it back and forth with a sheepish grin. Sighing, Kurt held out his hand and accepted the baggie, pressing it to his nose and inhaling deeply through the plastic. With no small measure of surprise, he glanced back up at Blaine, who waggled his eyebrows and said, “Good, right?”

Letting out another sigh, Kurt handed it back. “We need snacks and live music before I’ll even consider this. On principle.”

“Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much, but I already have that covered,” Blaine announced excitedly, and he sped off into the kitchen area. Kurt just stared after him.

“What do you mean, ‘already covered?’ How do you have live music ‘already covered?’” he asked, poking his head around the open door to see Blaine already dumping out a bag of pita chips into an oversized bowl.

“I’ve got a bootleg of a show at the KOKO from last year,” he replied, speaking quickly and excitedly. “There’s a few bands I’ve been _dying_ to play for you—this one band, Bastille? Holy shit, you’re gonna love them. I actually have a feeling that they’re gonna be _huge—“_

Kurt silenced him with a kiss, pulling back only when he was breathless. He pressed his forehead to Blaine’s temple, and simply whispered, “Okay.”

 

“No, seriously, it looks like a face!” Kurt crowed, looking at the map that hung outside the cabin door and pointing at Montana’s western border. “It’s the _profile_ of a _person,_ Blaine.”

“Do you think it’s a thing?” Blaine asked. “Like, do you think anybody ever gave it a name?”

“What, like Steve? The Steve side of Montana?” Kurt suggested.

“The Steve side of Montana,” Blaine agreed, just as [_Pompeii_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/64352769607) came to an end.

“Oh my god, play it again.”

“Kurt, it’s already on repeat.”

“But _Blaine,_ play it again.”

“I told you you’d love them.”

 _“But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?”_ Kurt sang at the top of his voice, not even caring that he was horribly off-key and emulating the lead singer’s pronounced English accent. He giggled to himself and took another toke from their second joint of the evening just as a thought occurred to him. “Hey. Why do we never play ‘Would You Rather’ anymore?”

“Because it always ended with awkwardness or dick jokes,” Blaine reminded him, barely stifling a snigger as he took the joint from between Kurt’s fingers. The smoke was a thick cloud around them where they sat on the porch; it was a still night, and the air was freezing, but with Blaine curled around him on the rocking chair, Kurt didn’t particularly notice. He didn’t care at all, in fact.

“We played it all the time when we were kids,” Kurt mused idly. He glanced up at Blaine and slowly worked his fingers into his thick curls, his arms feeling pleasantly heavy. “You need a haircut.”

“Do not,” Blaine replied petulantly, and stuck the end of the joint back between Kurt’s lips. “Don’t you remember how long it was when we first met?”

“Mmhmm,” Kurt hummed on an exhale. “You looked like a hobbit. Not that I actually knew what a hobbit was when we were six.”

“Speaking of hobbits,” Blaine said, “do you remember that day up in your attic, with the calendar?”

“Of course I do,” Kurt replied, smiling fondly at the memory.

The Saturday after they met, Kurt and Blaine had been up in Kurt’s attic looking through box upon box of books, and found an old Tolkien calendar from 1990. Kurt had helped Blaine count along with him, their fingers hop-scotching across the squares, and they had gone from September sixteenth to December twenty-fifth three times to be sure. They got to one hundred every time.

“Do you get twice as many presents, then?” Kurt had asked him, thinking that it must have been great to be born on Christmas, but when Blaine had wrinkled his nose, he’d wondered if everyone always asked him the same thing.

“Nope. Mommy and Daddy get me one extra present that’s just for my birthday, but nobody else does.”

Kurt had thought that it wasn’t very fair at all, and tried to remember to ask his mommy if they could get Blaine two presents in December, when they went shopping at the big department store with the pretty Christmas windows.

He told Blaine as much now, and Blaine smiled as he dragged deeply from the joint. In the dim porch light, Kurt watched his eyes grow dark; Blaine tapped Kurt’s mouth once before he leaned down and sealed his lips over Kurt’s. It was a kiss, an addictively poisonous kiss, and Kurt pulled the smoke out of Blaine’s mouth and into his lungs, his hands flying up to frame Blaine’s face. He rested his forehead against Blaine’s when he pulled back, eyes closed, and let the dizziness take him.

The rocking chair tipped back and forth, back and forth, creaking under their combined weight, and _god,_ Kurt loved him so much. He loved Blaine’s every last cell, and reason only just edged out his wild urge to confess something, anything. He swallowed hard, and said, “Tell me something you want.”

“To be in two places at once,” Blaine whispered, his right hand covering Kurt’s where it had slipped to rest against the warmth of his pulse point.

“Easy,” Kurt whispered back, “just straddle a state line. Tell me something real, something you actually want.”

Blaine sighed and dropped his head, burrowing into the hollow of Kurt’s neck. “I want you to fuck me in front of the fireplace later.”

“Later is good,” Kurt managed. “I don’t know if I can—“

“Me either!” Blaine interrupted, bursting into laughter that shook his entire body. “It’s like my dick disappeared.”

“What do you mean it disappeared?”

“It moved. To _space.”_

“Oh my god. I’m so high that that actually made sense,” Kurt whined on a giggle, taking a deep breath and waving his hand to try and calm himself enough to ask again. It was no use, though; he was done for. He clutched onto Blaine like his life depended on it and both of them laughed until they wheezed, until it had been so long that he had to relight the joint before taking another drag. “Seriously, though. What do you want for your birthday this year?”

“Surprise me,” Blaine answered smoothly.

“You hate surprises.”

“I like yours.”

“Okay,” Kurt murmured. “Seriously, how is it only twenty-six days away? That’s less than four weeks.”

“Don’t,” Blaine said, his voice so low and commanding that it sent a frisson dancing up and down Kurt’s spine. He stifled the impulse to break the tension by attempting to bounce Blaine on his knee or something equally ridiculous—his legs were almost asleep anyway, and he shifted uncomfortably.

“Getting cold,” he mumbled, burying his face against Blaine’s chest and rubbing his cheek against the soft flannel of his shirt. It felt _amazing,_ and Kurt couldn’t help but let out a moan of approval. Blaine’s answering chuckle was a deep rumble in his chest, and oh—every sensation was like a miniature firework bursting beneath Kurt’s skin.

Time slipped by him as Blaine clambered out of his lap and bundled him inside, and before Kurt really knew what was going on, he found himself stretched out along the couch, Blaine sitting pretzel-style at one end with Kurt’s head in his lap. His iPod was still playing, the sound amplified by the deep bowl into which Blaine had placed it, but the song had changed, now—he vaguely recognized it as [_Back Down South_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/71674684137) by Kings of Leon. It was sad, heavy, and soothing—perfect for his sudden and inexplicable wave of melancholy.

They were coasting: he knew that much. Their zigzagging route around America was coming toward its final downswing; after leaving this cabin—a prospect Kurt didn’t want to entertain for longer than absolutely necessary—they would indeed head back down south for the last time. He wanted to stay here forever, bury this night in the soil of the flowerbeds that lined the cabin’s back yard and let enough time pass for something to bloom, something that ached with beauty.

“I had a crush on you in senior year,” he blurted before he could stop himself, and just before he screwed his eyes shut, he caught a glimpse of Blaine’s surprised gaze settling on him.

“Told you I liked your surprises,” Blaine murmured, his fingers carding gently through Kurt’s hair. “Yours probably didn’t involve ice cream and hand-holding, though.”

“No, it did,” Kurt replied, sighing as he opened his eyes. “I mean, it was before Brad, so…”

“Ah, yes. Brad the Great Deflowerer.”

“That’s not a word. And—“

“It’s totally a word.”

“And he didn’t _deflower_ me; I wasn’t some blushing virgin.”

“Sweetheart, you’d barely even admit to jerking off until you were seventeen.”

“So not true.”

“It is! Why do you think I was so surprised when you told me your kill count?”

Kurt snorted derisively. “I’ve said it before: this coming from the guy who was practically celibate before me.”

Blaine simply laughed again, dropping his head and gazing down at Kurt through his thick eyelashes. “So, about that kill count…”

“Yes?” he prompted.

“Who was the best?” Blaine asked at length.

 _“That_ is quite a question. Hmm, let’s see…” Kurt teased, making a show of tapping his chin. He knew the answer, of course, but he also knew that Blaine was fishing for compliments. “Well, there was Brad, of course. I guess I kind of have to look back and laugh, a little bit. But for a first time, he was… Nice. It was nice.

“Then—well, you knew about Nathaniel. Drunk, don’t remember much,” Kurt continued, wrinkling his nose. “Edward was… Mm, Edward was fantastic. And then… Max, obviously.”

“So we’ve covered the ones I know about,” Blaine cut in smoothly. He shifted on the couch, his posture straighter and his gaze more attentive. The firelight licked over his skin, casting him golden, and Kurt wanted to say that it didn’t matter, that none of it mattered, because Blaine was here and he was the only one that Kurt cared about anymore.

But he had started, so he would finish.

“After you left—literally the day after—I, um… I slept with Daniel.”

“Daniel who?” Blaine asked, and then, “Oh my _god,_ Daniel from the band?!”

Shamefaced, Kurt nodded, and Blaine burst out laughing. “Shut up,” he grumbled, reaching up and punching Blaine’s shoulder.

Blaine’s laughs were already dying in his throat, though; he grabbed Kurt’s arm and brushed his lips across the inside of his wrist. “How did that even happen?”

“I went over to April’s and they were all jamming together,” Kurt answered. “All of us went to The Cannery, one drink became seven… The next thing I know, we’re in his parents’ basement and I’ve got him over his desk.”

“Wow. Okay. Okay, so that’s five.”

“Oh my god, I need a drink,” Kurt moaned, hiding his face in his hands. He took a deep breath, and continued, “Alright. Next was Stefan—you know, the Serbian guy from Baxter House? Gave one _hell_ of a blow job. He just, um… Didn’t have much of his own to work with.

“You know, come to think of it…” he trailed off, retracing his own missteps of that lost year without Blaine. “There were… Four? Four guys after him that kind of all blur together. Then there was James Wilson—“

“Dairy Queen James Wilson?” Blaine asked.

“The very same.”

“He only came out last year.”

“Oh, I know,” Kurt said meaningfully, pursing his lips against a laugh and holding his hands up. “We ran into each other on campus, one thing led to another… He made the announcement the next day. I’m not saying I had anything to do with it, but…”

“I wonder how many other guys your dick has forced out of the closet,” Blaine mused, earning him another punch to the shoulder. “That makes eleven, by the way. So Chandler was twelve?”

“Interrupted, remember?

“Then who did I succeed?”

Kurt swallowed, mentally berating himself for ever admitting his number to Blaine on that balmy night back in Missouri. “Roberto Mancini.”

Blaine blanched and his mouth dropped open. “You had _sex_ with _Roberto Mancini?_ As in, the Roberto Mancini who almost fucked up my entire internship proposal?”

Nodding mutely, Kurt averted his eyes. “If it makes you feel any better, he was awful. He dragged me into the shower afterward and practically scrubbed us both raw because, and I quote, ‘we must wash off the sin.’ And then he tried to wash my hair for me. Which, _fuck no.”_

After a moment, he felt Blaine relax underneath him. A moment more, and he was shaking with laughter. “Oh my god. _Oh my god.”_

In spite of himself, Kurt was soon joining in, Blaine’s infectious belly laughs too much to resist. When he finally regained his breath, he said, “You never really told me, you know.”

“About what?”

“About Tyler. How was it?”

At that, Blaine sobered entirely, his eyebrows drawing together and his expression darkening. “Nothing. It was… Nothing.”

“And… Me?” Kurt asked carefully.

Meeting his gaze squarely, Blaine whispered, “Everything.”

“Oh,” he said. He let his eyes slide toward the flames roaring in the fireplace, let the music wrap around him anew, let everything fade except the still-pleasant buzz in his bloodstream. It was too much— _everything_ was too much these days. The weight of it all was terrifying, but then… But then there was something burning inside of him, too; something was stirring more and more, yearning to break free, and Kurt only ever felt sated when he let some of it out. Some of it, but not too much. Inches that still felt like miles: “You too, by the way. Out of everyone… It’s you.”

Blaine slid the tips of his fingers beneath the collar of Kurt’s Henley, and leaned down over him, holding himself just far enough away that his face didn’t blur. “See?” he whispered.

“See what?” Kurt breathed.

Blaine closed the last of the gap between them, and Kurt shut his eyes—warmth and home and _yes—_ and in the second before Blaine kissed him, he whispered, “I love your surprises.”

 

**Distance: 10,573 miles**

*

**Day 076: Saturday 1st December, 2012  
Running on Empty (Idaho)**

“My Own Private Idaho. _No question.”_

_“Kurt, I hate to break it to you, but… It wasn’t actually shot in Idaho.”_

_“…Fine._ Napoleon Dynamite, _then. But we’re still watching_ My Own Private Idaho.”

 

“Did you know that potatoes were first planted in Idaho in 1837?”

“What the _crap_ is this fucker _doing?”_

“Kurt, calm down," Blaine said wearily, glancing up from his phone to see Kurt’s eyebrows drawn together and his fingers tight around the steering wheel.

“I _am_ calm!” he shot back, gesticulating wildly. “But he’s the only other idiot on this godforsaken stretch of road and he’s doing, what, forty-five? In the passing lane? No. Grandma Betty drove better than that.”

“Well, it _is_ raining… Do you want me to take over?” Blaine asked.

“We’ve got, like, twenty miles to go,” Kurt reasoned. “What’s the point?”

“The point is that you could blow me while I’m driving,” Blaine replied, waggling his eyebrows when Kurt looked at him sharply. “What? You give excellent head. Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“We’ve been over that,” Kurt said evenly, returning his gaze to the road with a grimace. “Ugh. Fucking Idaho.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“What?”

“Well, I’d say more ‘promiscuous’ than ‘ho.’ That’s all,” Blaine said, trying and failing to keep a straight face.

Kurt glanced over at him again, and Blaine could see that he was fighting back a smile. “You’re a ridiculous human being today, Anderson. Why did I ever agree to come on this trip with you?”

“Because I’m an excellent travel buddy, I don’t hog the covers—that one’s all you—and I’m also a font of useful information,” he said, ticking items off on his fingers before picking up his phone again. “For instance, did you know that potatoes are, like, the _perfect_ food? You could eat nothing but spuds for the rest of your life and you’d still get all the nutrition you needed.”

“Spuds,” Kurt repeated flatly.

“Po-ta-toes.”

“Don't…”

“Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew.”

“I swear to _god,_ Blaine,” Kurt groaned.

“You know, if we switched, I could drive through _all_ of these puddles,” he barreled on.

“For the last fucking time, if we drive through puddles we’ll end up ruining the goddamn undercarriage.”

“I’ll ruin _your_ undercarriage.”

“What is _with_ you today? You’re like a petulant child! Let me guess, you got your license out of a Cracker Jack box—“ Kurt stopped short as the R.V. shuddered and jerked underneath them, the headlights dimming and the engine chugging. Within seconds Kurt was reacting, turning them onto the shoulder and letting the R.V. roll to a stop. He slumped back in his seat and cut the engine. “Perfect.”

“What’s going on?” Blaine asked, perplexed.

“I’m about ninety-five percent sure we just ran out of gas,” Kurt said, and unclipped his seatbelt to look at the dashboard. “Which also means that the fuel gauge is broken, and depending on what it is, I might not be able to fix it.”

Thinking quickly, Blaine grabbed the GPS and searched for the nearest gas station. Soon enough, their Kathy Bates sound-alike was telling them that the nearest gas station was an Exxon in Roberts, nearly three miles away. “Looks like we’re walking, then.”

“But it’s _raining,”_ Kurt groaned.

“So I’m ridiculous and childish today, and you’re whiny,” Blaine said as he stood up, stretching out his arms and looking down at Kurt with a smile. “Isn’t that the trifecta?”

“’Ridiculous’ is usually interchangeable with ‘hungry,’ but yeah, pretty much,” Kurt huffed. “And I’m not _whiny;_ other people are idiots and I’m sick of driving. Don’t _you_ think it’s been kind of hard to get back into the swing since Montana?”

“Well, sure,” Blaine agreed as he bent to retrieve an umbrella from the small closet behind the cab. “Why do you think I’ve been reading about potatoes for the last few miles?”

Kurt smiled wanly, then cast his gaze about the cab. “One of us should probably stay here.”

“I’ll go,” Blaine said, patting himself down to make sure he had his phone and wallet.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll be back before you know it. Maybe you can take a look at the gauge, see if you can figure out what’s going on.”

“Wait,” Kurt said, and as Blaine looked up, Kurt closed the distance between them and caught Blaine’s lips in a deep, lingering kiss that sent tingles up and down his spine.

“What was that for?” he asked when Kurt had pulled back.

“Going out in the rain to get gas,” Kurt replied, his eyes trained on the front of Blaine’s shirt. “Plus, you know. It’s Idaho. You could die.”

Blaine rolled his eyes and pressed a kiss to Kurt’s cheek before turning on his heel and exiting through the side door. Outside, he shook out the umbrella and put it up, drawing his wool sweater tighter around his neck with his free hand. The rain was coming down in torrents but the air was fresh—country air that smelt of farmland and reminded Blaine of his mom’s ratatouille.

Catching himself, Blaine shook his head and kept walking. He was spending so much time looking back, these days—and that had never been him. There were things to consider, factors that would affect his future and what would happen when he and Kurt got back to Maine, but more than anything he found his mind wandering to their shared past and things he could have done differently to get them to this place sooner.

Blaine was certain of it, now: they belonged together. While the momentum of their trip had arrested for the past couple of days, Blaine’s momentum for saying the words on the tip of his tongue, the words itching to get out, was building and building and building behind him. He was just waiting for the right time.

“Blaine!”

He started and whipped around at the sound of his name cutting through the pounding of rain on his umbrella. Kurt was running toward him cradling something wrapped in a plastic bag in his arms, clearly paying no attention to the fact that he was nearly soaking wet, and Blaine jogged back toward him to usher him underneath the cover of his umbrella.

“I thought you might be cold,” Kurt offered, shoving the bag at him with a lopsided smile, and when Blaine looked inside, he saw the heather gray of his thick Bowdoin hoodie.

“You… Kurt,” Blaine said, at a loss for words as he took him in, shirt plastered to his chest and his teeth chattering. He pulled out the hoodie and gave it to Kurt instead, ignoring Kurt’s protests and telling him, “Come on, you’re freezing. You need it more than I do.”

He watched Kurt pull the hoodie over his head and tuck the bag into the pocket, and it was probably a good moment to say something, the inherent romance of their surroundings—rain pit-pattering and rippling the surface of the small reservoir to their right, the slight shadow cast over them by the umbrella—lending itself well to the fact. But he didn’t feel… Ready. He was still testing the waters of their relationship, trying to see whether they really could have all of each other and still be _them,_ still be the Kurt and Blaine who bantered and teased and flirted. His biggest fear was that they wouldn’t, that they would morph into something neither of them ever wanted to be, even though what they had now felt like the purest thing Blaine had ever known.

So instead of, “I love you,” Blaine said, “Let’s go.”

 

With Kurt by his side, the six-mile round trip didn’t feel as long as the ninety minutes it took them. They had walked most of it in companionable silence, giggling and ribbing each other every so often as they huddled and bumped into one another beneath the umbrella made for one. On their return trip, Blaine had eventually just wrapped his arm around Kurt’s waist and matched his stride, basking in the sweet smile Kurt had given him before ducking his head and adjusting his grasp on the gas can.

“I couldn’t really see much when I looked at it, but once I get my tools…” Kurt trailed off when they were about a mile away from the R.V. “Let’s just pray that it’s a blown fuse.”

“What else could it be?” Blaine asked.

“A broken circuit in the dash panel or a fractured float,” Kurt said, “and we really don’t want it to be either of those, because we’d have to call Triple-A. But… I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the float.”

“Why?”

“Because the floats expand and contract depending on the temperature, and we’ve kind of been going from one extreme to the other. Just keep everything crossed.”

“You’re sexy when you talk mechanics,” Blaine told him, squeezing his waist.

“Really, B? You’re choosing now,” Kurt said archly.

“What, you’re allowed any number of lumberjack fantasies and I can’t have this one little thing for you doing your grease monkey bit?”

“No, dork, I meant that we’re walking by the side of the road where I can’t just have my way with you.”

“Well…”

“No. Just… Do something to distract me. But please, for the love of god, make it have _nothing_ to do with potatoes.”

Blaine thought for a moment, considering his options— _keep winding him up until he pins me against something; confess everything because that’ll_ definitely _distract him, at the very least, and maybe_ then _he’ll pin me against something; recite an epic movie speech; sing him a song—_ and finally settling on [humming under his breath](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/71674920997), growing louder until he caught the tilt of Kurt’s head toward him. The slow spread of a smile across Kurt’s face was like rays of sunlight through a chink in the clouds, and before long he was joining in, his lower register grown richer in the weeks since Ann Arbor.

 _“Out here in the fields!”_ Blaine sang, throwing his arms wide and not caring when the torrents of rain began to soak them both. Kurt yelped, but to his credit kept up his humming of the piano part. _“I farm for my meals! I get my back into my living!”_

Blaine pointed the umbrella at Kurt and gestured for him to take the next line, claiming the piano for his own.

 _“I don’t need to fight to prove I’m right!”_ Kurt sang at the top of his voice, circling around Blaine on light feet and dancing just out of reach, as if they were singing were some flirty duet in the manner of Ray Charles and Betty Carter. _“I don’t need to be forgiven, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…”_

Blaine swung the umbrella by its handle and brought it to rest across his body, showing off his best air guitar as Kurt doubled over laughing. He wasted no time in taking up the next line of vocals: _“Don’t cry, don’t raise your eye. It’s only teenage wasteland._

 _“Sally, take my hand,”_ he sang, offering his hand to Kurt and spinning him in place, _“we’ll travel south ‘cross land.”_

 _“Put out the fire, and don’t look past my shoulder,”_ Kurt joined in, mirroring Blaine in dropping his chin to hit the low note. _“The exodus is here, the happy ones are near. Let’s get together before we get much older.”_

Not wanting the tension of the lyric to settle into their bones as they looked at each other, Blaine sprinted onward into the guitar solo, pulling as many stupid rock star faces as he could. He nodded at Kurt for a count of four and took a deep breath, spreading his arms wide as they finished, _“Teenage wasteland, it’s only teenage wasteland. Teenage wasteland, oh yeah, teenage wasteland. They’re all wasted!”_

“Oh my god,” Kurt said breathlessly, wrapping his arms around his middle as he doubled over again. “Sometimes I forget what complete dorks we are. How are we supposed to find anyone that can put up with us? We’re _doomed.”_

“Ah, maybe,” Blaine bantered, sliding his arm back around Kurt’s waist and holding the umbrella up again, even though they were both wet to the skin. “But anyone who can’t rock out to The Who isn’t worth your time, you know.”

“This is true,” Kurt agreed, taking a deep breath and finally seeming to get his laughter under control. As they walked, already much closer to the R.V. than Blaine had thought, Kurt turned to look at him and cleared his throat. “I—“

“What?” Blaine asked lightly. _Right, left, right, left, keep your fucking feet moving._

Kurt shook his head, reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck. “I’m thinking maybe Idaho’s not so bad after all.”

“As long as you’ve got the right music,” Blaine told him, tamping down on his disappointment and turning it instead to fuel. He _would_ be the one to break this stalemate, and now he could almost be certain of the response. It didn’t matter that he knew how Kurt felt about him—feelings were, all things considered, the easy part. What was difficult was knowing whether Kurt would stop being stubborn long enough to confess those feelings.

When they reached the R.V., it was almost like watching Kurt step into a different skin, one with which Blaine had become well-acquainted over the summer while they spent time in Burt’s shop. He quickly changed out of his wet things and into a clean t-shirt and jeans—all business, so Blaine busied himself by taking the gas can and filling the tank before heading back inside and plopping himself into the driver’s seat to watch Kurt work.

Within a few minutes, Kurt had the fuse box under the glove compartment open, the cover flipped over in his hands so that he could look at the schematic. He arranged himself somewhat awkwardly so that he could duck underneath with a small flashlight clenched between his teeth, and as he pulled out a fuse and held it up to the light, he let out a muffled yet triumphant, “Ha!”

“Lady Luck on our side?” Blaine prompted, and in lieu of a spoken response, Kurt gave him a thumbs-up. He made short work of switching out the blown fuse for a new one, and at his second thumbs-up, Blaine switched on the engine and watched the gauge slide to a few clicks above empty. “You’re the man, Kurt Hummel.”

“Learned from the best,” Kurt quipped, replacing the cover of the fuse box and climbing gracefully out from the gap into which he’d wedged himself. “I was thinking that we might as well change the oil while we’re here.”

“That makes, what—four changes since we left?” Blaine asked, switching off the engine again.

“Look at what happened today. It’s just good sense,” Kurt reasoned, brushing himself off before stepping between Blaine’s knees and murmuring into his ear, “Anyway, I thought you liked it when I did my grease monkey bit.”

Blaine groaned and made a half-hearted attempt at pushing him away, thinking better of it halfway through the motion and pulling him down for a dirty, open-mouthed kiss. “Let’s be quick. We need to fill up the tank and get to the campground.”

“What’s the hurry?” Kurt asked.

Blaine knew he was teasing, stalling for time just because he could; he ran his hands up and down the backs of Kurt’s thighs, squeezing just below the curve of his ass, and said, “You are.”

 

**Distance: 11,051 miles**

*

**Day 078: Monday 3rd December, 2012  
Everything but the Truth (Wyoming)**

“Brokeback?”

_“Oh, can we? Please? I’m still trying to repress watching it with Dad.”_

_“Cowboys, Kurt. Do you need to ask? It’s like you don’t even know me at all.”_

 

“Hmm… Are you starting to feel better?”

Kurt arched his back, hissing pleasantly as Blaine’s fingernails scratched over his hipbones. “I’m still fucking sick of driving, and Kathy Bates is still a fucking liar.”

“But are—you starting—to feel better?” Blaine repeated, carefully punctuating his words in time with his rocks back and forth, Kurt buried to the hilt inside him. He looked down at Kurt with eyes that said, _I’m accepting none of your bullshit today, Hummel._

“Yes. I’m— _fuck—_ definitely feeling better,” Kurt answered, and finally let it all drain away: the frustration that they had run out of coffee and there were no decent beans to be found anywhere; the anger at the GPS having led them astray and dumped them at a campground in Rock Springs; the constant dull ache that had been plaguing his lower back for days.

All that was left behind was Blaine, tight and slick around him— _angel—_ gorgeous as he leaned back and planted his hands behind him on Kurt’s thighs— _fierce, owning, beautiful—_ rolling his hips slowly, deliciously and _agonizingly_ slowly.

Kurt ran his fingers up and down Blaine’s torso, lazily, like there was no rush—there wasn’t; there never had to be. Having Blaine above him, riding him like it was the thing he was put on Earth to do, made him close his eyes, moan through his bitten lips, and sink.

 _There doesn’t have to be anything but this,_ the voice in the back of his head reminded him. His hands trailed down to squeeze Blaine’s hips—just once, just enough of a signal. But Kurt didn’t try to quiet the voice, didn’t try to ignore it, simply sank further and further past it to the very core of his pleasure: burning hot, crackling energy and made just for him. It felt as if the brokenness inside him had been being repaired ever since their first kiss; strands of yarn were slowly knitting back together something he hadn’t even known was torn until Blaine had held it up before him. He could see it all behind his eyelids, playing out like a movie of his life: silent and monochrome until Blaine, and then glorious Technicolor that exploded in a riot of light and noise and love.

“God bless Wyoming, _fuck,”_ Blaine whispered, dropping forward and bracketing Kurt’s head with his forearms. The chill of the frigid December air was gone as soon as they were skin to skin, and the blanket covering them captured the heat from their campfire, wrapping them in a cocoon of warmth and the scents of forest air and clean sweat.

Breathlessly, Kurt said, “I keep telling you, it’s not even a real place. It’s a state of mind.”

“Don’t think it was where Billy Joel was singing about, though,” Blaine quipped, laughing on a ragged exhale that disappeared inside a moan, and _oh,_ the feeling of that was two different types of bliss.

“That’s— _Blaine—_ that’s because… Fuck, keep doing that…”

“Admit it, Kurt: Wyoming is real. Otherwise, where exactly _are_ we right now?”

“North Colorado.”

“There’s already a north Colorado.”

Not missing a beat, Kurt chuckled and rolled his eyes, wrapping his arms around Blaine’s middle and rolling them over underneath the thick blanket. _“Really_ north Colorado, then.”

“Fine, really—fucking _hell,_ Kurt—really north Colorado it is,” Blaine acquiesced, hooking his legs around Kurt’s waist and urging him closer, faster, deeper, until Kurt felt like they might both split apart and be fused instead into one person. He surfaced, buried his face in the curve of Blaine’s neck, and licked a sloppy kiss over his collar bone.

He was spinning out, Blaine’s hands scrabbling for purchase on his back; Kurt pulled back and buried himself again with stronger movements and utter abandon. Always the chasing—it was always the chasing and always had been, but with Blaine, it was running hand in hand toward something: running toward a horizon appearing as if they were painting it onto the sky themselves; running toward the next ten years; running toward each other. And Kurt knew that the truth was far from any of that—from _all_ of it—but the lie was too seductive, too easy to believe, too hard to resist.

“Sweetheart,” Blaine intoned, reaching up and cupping Kurt’s jaw, “get out of your head and come join me.”

Smirking down at him, Kurt moved as if to twist out of his grasp but Blaine held firm, eyes locked on his—all at once, something shifted between them and Kurt realized that he was close, right on the brink, as if he’d been falling with the ground rushing up to meet him.

“Eyes on me,” Blaine murmured, his voice half-strangled as he arched and writhed.

Kurt swallowed, the motion almost constricted by the way Blaine was holding him, and _when_ had Blaine become this? When had he transformed into this bundle of sex and want and arcane knowledge, sizzling with an electricity that made Kurt dizzy?

“Don’t close your— _fuck,_ I’m so close…”

And Kurt wasn’t just running, now; he was _racing,_ like his heartbeat, pounding Blaine into the unforgiving ground and winding his hand between them to twist it around Blaine’s length. He could feel himself cracking, leaving shards of himself behind as he moved harder, faster, pivoting and falling into the honeyed amber of Blaine’s eyes until—

Breaking point, both of them coming, slack-jawed and silent, pulsing and trembling—a flat line and a shock back to life all at once. Flashes in Blaine’s eyes: light and dark; life and death; love and despair—everything Kurt had seen in him in Louisiana, and it was too much. He collapsed, his limbs shaking and spent, and with loose lips he silently mouthed those three painful little words into the bare skin of Blaine’s shoulder.

The freezing nighttime temperatures caught up with him all at once as he carefully shifted them both onto their sides, curling into Blaine with a shiver—his hands were burning yet freezing to the touch—and still buried inside him even as he softened.

“Blaine Anderson: kinky exhibitionist. Who knew?” he said quietly, glancing up at the patches of sky visible through the tree canopy above. It felt like too soon to look Blaine in the eye again.

“You’re the one who told me you wanted to have sex outside,” Blaine said, tugging the blanket up under their chins and hissing as their feet were briefly exposed to the cold.

“When the hell did I say that?” Kurt asked. Slowly, wincing all the way, he pulled out and sat up to retrieve more blankets from the pile, heaping them on top of them both until they resembled something of a nest.

“July fourth.”

“There’s no way I said that.”

“You did!” Blaine exclaimed, his voice loud in Kurt’s ear where he’d curled into Blaine’s arms once more. “After the fireworks were done, don’t you remember? We were still squeezed into that lounger, and I saw Hugh and Lisa coming out of the bushes…”

“Right,” Kurt said, nodding as the memory resurfaced. “And you made _The Face,_ and I told you to lighten up, and then you made The Face at _me,_ and I said—“

“You said that you’d wanted to try it for a while. Just to see what it’d be like,” Blaine finished for him, his fingertips ghosting the skin of his arm. “And?”

“Pretty damn perfect, I’d say.”

They lapsed into quiet after that—or at least as much quiet as there was to be had in the middle of the wooded clearing, owls hooting in the trees and insects chirping, not to mention Kurt’s iPod playing somewhere almost out of reach behind them.

 _How can this be a lie?_ he thought, suddenly overcome with desperation and reeling from the way his emotions ricocheted from one extreme to another. _How can he lie here with me, wrapped up in my favorite blanket and looking like everything I want for the rest of my life, and not be the real thing? How can I be wrong when I know that he’s_ it; _not just my best friend but my everything?_

The clarity made him swallow his fear, and he wriggled out of Blaine’s arms, licking his lips and clearing his throat. Letting it out in increments wasn’t enough—it would never be enough, not until he let it all out in one exhale—and this moment… Until the music switched, ‘pretty damn perfect’ was exactly how Kurt would have described it.

But the song _did_ switch, to Yellowcard’s _[Keeper](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/71675102199),_ and while it began with an almost uplifting sound, Kurt knew the song inside out. Fear broke over him like the waves of a sea in the height of a storm— _I want you to love me, I want you to leave me—_ and he was gone, again— _I wish I could be somebody else—_ and Blaine was wrapped around him but so far out of reach with the way he suddenly tensed— _Wish there was something inside me to keep you beside me—_ and moving to switch the song would be too much of an admission: Kurt knew it, and he knew that Blaine knew it, too.

So they lay there silently until the song ended— _I should’ve told you everything, I should’ve told you everything—_ watching each other in the dark, and Kurt thought it was all over.

Abruptly—too abruptly for it to be the cold finally getting to him—Blaine moved away, his arm shooting out to grab the iPod and switch it off. Kurt swallowed, sitting up and wrapping a blanket around himself. He felt more exposed than he ever had in front of Blaine, like a raw nerve expecting to be brought to wreck and ruin.

“We’re always listening to music,” Blaine said, looking out into the darkness of the trees that edged the clearing. “We used to be able to be quiet around each other and now it seems like it’s this huge, scary thing.

“And do you know why that is, Kurt?” he continued, fixing his gaze on him—it penetrated to Kurt’s very core, like Blaine could see through his every mask. “It’s because ever since we started this, we’ve stopped knowing how to talk to each other. It’s because we've always known that this is something bigger than either of us thought it was, but there’s so much riding on it that we both just shut our mouths and got on with it. But I—I… I can’t do it anymore.

“I’m in love with you.”

And just like that, the strands unraveled. _I’m not ready,_ he thought, openly gaping at Blaine and pulling the blanket tighter. How could Blaine love him, after all he’d done, after _Chicago,_ after all the time he’d wasted? It made no sense. It defied comprehension. All at once he wished with his entire being that there _was_ music, because the utter silence that fell inside his mind made him feel as if he were stuck in a dark space with the walls closing in on him.

He thought of Anne of Green Gables, unable to accept Gilbert’s love because she still viewed herself as a little girl. It was too adult a weight to carry upon his shoulders; having that responsibility both to and for another person. When had everything gotten so… Important? Where were the days of hanging at each other’s houses or on campus or at Coffee Pond, whiling away non-precious hours by watching the same movie over and over or playing What Would We Film Here or even studying?

Slowly, cautiously, Blaine reached for his hand. “Please say something.”

Kurt couldn’t help it: he pulled his hand back and said the first thing that came to mind: “Why now?”

“It’s not like you didn’t know,” Blaine scoffed.

“What?” Kurt breathed, eyes wide— _how can he… He can’t know, he can’t, he_ can’t…

“Please, you’ve known ever since Louisiana; I saw it in your eyes.”

“I told you that it—meant something with you; can’t we just leave it at that?”

“You told me _what_ meant something?” Blaine spat, suddenly getting to his feet, and both of them were naked under their blankets and this was _so_ not the way Kurt had wanted this evening to end but he hadn’t even known it until now.

Scrabbling for words, for coherency, for anything, he sputtered, “The… The sex, the—all of it.”

“When?”

“After the first time I—in West Virginia, it doesn’t matter, it—“

“Don’t you see? That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Blaine shouted.

“You’re my best friend; of _course_ it means something!” Kurt shot back, scrambling to his feet and looking Blaine straight in the eye.

“Okay. Okay, Kurt. I get it,” Blaine said softly. “This really _is_ just a road trip thing for you, isn’t it?”

 _What if? What if I was to tell him everything, offer him my bruised heart in exchange for his own? What if this is the moment that could begin something new, something wonderful, something that won’t ever have to end?_ But that was the thing. All good things had a shelf life—why should it be any different for them? They had laid down the rules for a reason. “We had a deal, Blaine. What happens on the road trip—“

“Stays on the road trip, I know,” Blaine interrupted, his voice low and dangerously controlled. His shoulders slumping, he turned as if to walk away, but seemed to think better of it at the last moment. He approached Kurt slowly, as if scared he might run away, and stopped when they were mere inches apart. “See, the thing is, I don’t believe you. And you can be as stubborn as you want about it, but I _know_ that what you feel for me is more than ‘best friends.’ So I’m not giving up, and I’m not going anywhere. It’s out there, now. You can do whatever you want with it.”

With that, he rocked forward and kissed Kurt tenderly—like he might at any other time of the day, like he hadn’t just fractured the fundamental building blocks of Kurt’s entire universe—and then walked away without looking back.

Kurt stood perfectly still, splintered and shivering in the dark.

 

**Distance: 11,313 miles**


	9. Chapter 9

**Day 080: Wednesday 5th December, 2012  
Four Corners (Utah)**

“127 Hours? _It’s got James Franco…”_

_“Have you—I mean, obviously you know what happens. Will you hold my hand?”_

_“Of_ course _I will, silly.”_

 

Considering that not two days earlier Blaine had put everything on the line, things between him and Kurt were remarkably normal.

Well, as normal as they could be for two people acting as if they were a couple in a real relationship suffering the aftermath of a huge argument—which Blaine loved and hated in equal measure. Neither of them was the victor nor willing to back down; Blaine was biding his time, holding onto his patience and waiting Kurt out, and Kurt was avoiding the issue entirely.

“Are you sure you don't want me to go with you?” Kurt asked they rolled to an idling stop on South Main Street, just around the corner from the Moab Yoga Studio. He was already decked out in his gym gear, his mat rolled up across his lap—quietly breathtaking when Blaine glanced over and took him in.

At length, Blaine shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

“I could get directions, walk up and meet you after,” Kurt said, hands twitching in his lap like he wanted to reach out. Blaine wished he would; they’d barely even touched since _that_ night.

“Seriously, go enjoy your class. I’ll be back in time to pick you up,” he replied.

Kurt shot him the ghost of a smile and got out of his seat. As he was passing by, Blaine caught his wrist, rubbed his index finger across Kurt's skin, and looked up at him imploringly. The problem with being patient was that every second of every minute of every hour, he seemed to grow infinitesimally heavier. His heart felt by turns like a bruise inside his chest and then like a treasure of sorts, something he needed to keep safe for the moment Kurt would finally come and claim it, hands open and outstretched. Although he knew that the latter was the truth—that he was now simply the caretaker of his heart because it belonged to Kurt—it didn’t particularly make the waiting any easier.

For one fleeting moment, as Kurt bent at the waist to dust a kiss to Blaine’s lips, he was back in Key West, the land falling away beneath him. Then it was back, and Kurt was gone.

Sighing, Blaine rolled his neck and shoulders and pulled off down the street. At least the drive was appropriately distracting; the openness of the road under the prematurely darkening sky afforded him a view of the mountains up ahead and made him feel, for once, like he was at the very heart of something. The buildings grew sparser the farther he went, giving way to trees and grassy scrubland as the mountains shifted to his right. It grew darker the further he got out of Moab proper, the only lights those of cars in the distance and the R.V. itself.

He took a left along San Jose Road and then a right onto Spanish Valley Drive, passing by small wooden houses and backyards strewn with discarded tires. He pressed further and further into the mostly residential neighborhood until eventually, silhouettes of gravestones passed slowly by.

Once Blaine had parked in the sparsely populated lot at the far end of Sunset Memorial Gardens, he scrubbed a hand over his face, retrieved the small bunch of daisies from the dashboard, and reached into the glove compartment for the small box of his grandfather's ashes that had accompanied them thus far on their road trip.

Arthur Thomas had been born and raised in Moab, where he had been married at eighteen to his high school sweetheart, Rose. When she and Arthur were both twenty-four, she had passed away from what would later become known as cervical cancer. Afterward, with ghosts around every corner and no children to support, Arthur had left Moab for Richmond, Virginia, to begin work with a construction company and start a new life.

In his will, he had asked that a small portion of his ashes be scattered at Rose’s grave—a part of her had remained with him until the day he’d died, and he wanted part of him back with her. Because the R.V. had been left to Blaine and he was on the road trip anyway, it simply made the most sense for him to be the one to carry out his grandfather’s final request.

It took little time for him to locate the plot he was looking for on the map by the entrance, and though the cemetery was mostly dark, there were small lamps set at intervals in the ground that kept him on track.

When Blaine found the grave, he set about brushing leaves and debris from the faded stone, his heart aching—with no siblings or children of her own, Rose’s grave had been all but forgotten. Running his fingers over the worn grooves and depressions of her name, he laid the daisies at the foot of her headstone and got back to his feet.

“Hello, ma’am,” he said with a gentle nod. “I’m—my name’s Blaine. I’m Arthur’s grandson.”

At a loss for what else to say, standing at the grave of a woman he’d never known—that even his mother had never known—and feeling almost like he was being perfidious to the memory of his own grandmother, he buried his hands in his pockets.

“He wanted to… He asked to be brought back to you,” he finally said, drawing the small wooden box out of his pocket and turning it over in his hands. “We weren't expecting it, but you should—you should know that he passed away peacefully, and he wasn’t in any pain.”

The corners of his eyes stung and he tipped his head back, blinking up at the sky. “I guess you know that, though, if you’re up there,” he continued self-consciously, his voice hushed, almost a murmur. “Maybe… Maybe you could tell him that I miss him. Every single day. And… We called the R.V. Leona.”

At that he fell silent, remembering the taste of cider and sugar on Kurt's lips while meteors streaked by. He shook his head, loosening the memories before they had a chance to take hold, and dug his phone out of his pocket. Clutching the wooden box tightly in his other hand, he scrolled through his contacts to _Mom,_ and hit send.

“Hi, honey,” Alice answered brightly after the fourth ring, and just the sound of her voice made Blaine loosen his grip on the box.

“Hey, Mom,” he said. “How’s the weather?”

“Cloudy with a chance of meatballs,” she quipped, and though Blaine rolled his eyes, he couldn’t help but smile a little. “It was sunny this afternoon, but it’s cold. Nothing big to report. How about where you boys are?”

“It’s already dark here, and pretty cold.”

“And where is ‘here?’”

Blaine squared his shoulders and fixed his eyes upon Rose’s headstone. “Mom… I’m in Moab.” After a few seconds had passed with no response, Blaine pulled the phone away from his ear to check that the call was still connected. “Mom?”

“Sorry, honey. I’m here,” she said tremulously. “So you’re in Grandpa’s home town.”

“Yeah. I’m at the cemetery. I thought I’d—well, I… I wanted you to be on the phone with me while I did this. I didn’t wanna do it alone.”

“Alone? Where’s Kurt?”

“A yoga class in town,” Blaine said dismissively, adding, “We just needed a little space, that’s all.”

“You boys aren’t fighting, are you?” she asked.

“No, Mom, we’re not fighting. We just…”

“Blaine, you know I can tell when you’re lying to me.”

“I’m not lying, I just—I don’t… I don’t know what we’re doing anymore,” Blaine said, the words rushing out of him like a breath held for too long. “I came clean with him two days ago, told him _everything,_ and he just… He hasn’t said anything.”

“Oh, honey,” Alice sighed. “He’ll get there.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“He will. You did the right thing in telling him.”

“How can you be so sure?” Blaine asked, his voice small as his most deeply seated fears confronted him.

“Because I’ve known Kurt since he was six years old, and I know that he loves you with his whole heart,” Alice said assuredly. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“I feel like we’ve wasted so much time already, though,” Blaine admitted. “There were so many times when I could have—“

“Thinking like that isn’t going to get you anywhere,” she gently interrupted. “And look at how brave you were in telling him. My brave little soldier.”

 _“Mom,”_ Blaine whined.

“All I’m saying is that I’m proud of you. And Kurt will come around. Just you wait,” she said. “Now, you’ve got something to do for Grandpa. No more stalling.”

“I wasn’t—“ Blaine began, but cut himself off as he realized that stalling was at least part of what he’d been doing. He held up the small wooden box, examining the intricately carved Celtic knot on the lid, and heaved a deep sigh. A breeze picked up, and he knew that it was time. “Do you think I should say something?”

“Only if you need to, honey,” came the soft reply, tinged with a deep, yet mostly concealed, sadness.

He carefully unlatched the small metal clasp on the front of the box and opened the lid, averting his eyes even in the darkness. He wanted to say something, but he’d said all of his goodbyes on the day of the funeral, Kurt’s fingers in the crook of his elbow smoothing the rough edges. The breeze picked up even more, and as he tipped the box toward the ground by degrees, words from a song he’d heard long ago came back to him: _“And when the day arrives, I’ll become the sky. And I’ll become the sea, and the sea will come to kiss me, for I am going home. Nothing can stop me now.”_

“That’s beautiful, Blaine. I think Grandpa would have liked that,” Alice murmured after a moment, her voice thick. “You run along now, okay? Go and find Kurt, and tell him to give you a hug from me.”

Blaine nodded, and said, “Okay, Mom. Love you.”

“I love you too, honey.”

He hung up with a heavy heart, pausing as Rose’s name caught his eye once more. He felt oddly sorry that he’d never known the first woman to have captured his grandfather’s heart. They’d had so little time together—but then, as Blaine’s grandfather had himself once said, “I’m lucky that your Grandma turned out to be a love of my life. I’m lucky to have had two of those.”

Leaving the box on top of the headstone, he turned and made his way back to the R.V., feeling a little lighter for having closed the chapter completely, and idly contemplating the words ‘love of my life.’

Later that evening, when he had picked Kurt up from yoga and taken in the flush high in his cheeks, the fluid grace returned to his body after such a noticeable absence, Kurt insisted on taking over driving duty. It took nearly three hours for Blaine to find out where Kurt was taking him, and as they stepped out of the R.V. in the middle of the desert, it dawned on him that his mother might have been right.

“One foot here, and the other here,” Kurt directed him as they stood atop the Four Corners monument. The border of the circle that surrounded the meeting point read, ‘Four states here meet in freedom under God.’ He had one foot in Arizona, the other in New Mexico. “Now, bend over—“

“Bend over?” Blaine asked him, one eyebrow raised.

“Stop being a pervert and just do it,” Kurt said.

“I swear to god if you take a picture of this,” he grumbled as he followed Kurt’s instruction, placing his left hand in Utah and his right in Colorado. “What now?”

“You bask in the fact that you’re in not just two, not just three, but _four_ places at once,” Kurt announced triumphantly, and a few hazy memories of their second night in Montana came back to Blaine. For a moment, he let the knowledge sink in and take root—he’d wanted to be in two places at once, and Kurt had given him four.

He stood, brushing his palms off on his jeans, before turning to Kurt and cupping his jaw with both hands. As he crushed their lips together and let the kiss set his body aflame, Kurt kissing him back with just as much fervor, his mind wandered back to those four words— _love of my life._

Instead of saying them aloud, however—there was most definitely such a thing as too much, too soon—he settled for five that he hoped conveyed everything all the same, whispered into Kurt’s ear like a promise and a prayer: “Thank you. I love you.”

 

**Distance: 11,798 miles**

**Additional Listening:** [_Iridescent_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/71675433678) by Linkin Park, [_Walk It Off_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/71675598814) by Angus & Julia Stone.

*

**Day 081: Thursday 6th December, 2012  
Hush (Colorado)**

_“We_ have _to, Blaine! I mean, look at us. Look at what we’re about to do. It has to be_ somewhere _on the list, and I vote Colorado.”_

_“Okay, okay. Sure. But which one of us is Thelma and which one of us is Louise?”_

_“Obviously I’m Thelma. It was Louise’s idea to run, after all…”_

 

When Kurt slipped quietly back inside the R.V., he found the living area empty. Sunlight poured in through the blinds covering the window behind the couch, and he tiptoed across the beams spilling onto the floor as if he were walking on broken glass.

“Blaine?” he called out, just as his eyes landed on a note propped up in front of the coffee maker: _Went for groceries, back soon. ♥B_

He felt himself relax, the mild tension draining from his shoulders as he shucked off his jacket and took his mom’s art journal from the inside pocket. After they had gotten settled at the Cottonwood Camper Park just outside the center of Durango, Kurt had slipped the journal out of his bedside cabinet and taken it with him on his walk into town. He was convinced that he had finally found the drawing he wanted to get as a tattoo—a rootless anchor with a fraying rope—but when he’d arrived on Camino Del Rio and looked up at the unassuming ‘Tattoo & Piercing’ sign over the door of Skin Incorporated, he’d carried on walking.

Instead, he’d ended up spending an hour in Buckley Park, one hand clutching a venti mocha with a triple shot, the other leafing fruitlessly through the journal while he wished more than ever that he could just pick up the phone and talk to her.

 _What do you do, Mom? When you feel too much?_ he’d wondered, his eyes lingering on the drawing of him and Blaine as boys. _Sometimes I feel like I’d just be waiting for him to break my heart, because I don’t know if I can trust him with it. It’s like he’s holding it and I’m following him around with my hands cupped underneath in case he drops it. I feel too much for him and it scares me shitless, so what do I do?_

Sighing as the ache resurfaced, Kurt decided to head for the shower, humming [an old Killers song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/71676326895) in an attempt to drive all other thoughts from his mind.

The scalding water was almost too hot, but it pounded on his shoulders and back and chased the cold from his skin and bones. When he stepped out ten minutes later to towel off, he smiled at the unmistakable shift in the air that let him know Blaine was back. He heard something fall to the floor and Blaine swore softly; Kurt bit his lip and shook his head as he pulled on the soft pair of yoga pants and dark blue t-shirt he’d brought in with him.

The first thing that Kurt saw when he slipped out of the bathroom was Blaine, sitting on the couch with his laptop playing [_The Lightning Strike_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/73437723174) by Snow Patrol, his fingers haphazardly playing a rhythm against his thigh. Sunlight still poured through the window behind him and it cast him in the same auburn halo that had surrounded him thousands of miles ago, before the kiss that had finally changed everything.

There was no describing how important Blaine was to him, for their story hadn’t begun with a dropped pen or eyes meeting across a crowded room or bumping into one another on a busy street and spilling coffee everywhere—it had begun with two young boys who had made each other feel a little less lost. Two young boys who had held each other together through thick and thin. Two young boys who should long have felt like brothers but never did.

Kurt could trace the threads back so far, and that was what had scared him into the tenuous safety of the silence that he used to despise. His heart had sunk at Blaine’s earnest confession, and Kurt had retreated, suddenly feeling unsettled within his own skin. It was a feeling that only got worse the longer Blaine waited, sending him patient smiles and nonchalantly whispered declarations.

He returned one of those smiles as Blaine looked up and caught his eye, his fingers still playing the keys of an invisible piano in time with the song. Silently, Kurt circled around and climbed onto the couch behind him, settling his knees either side of Blaine’s hips and draping his arms around his shoulders.

It was comfortable, but something about it made Kurt need more than he’d been allowing himself since Rock Springs; he ghosted a kiss to the back of Blaine’s neck, peeking over his shoulder and watching the lines of muscle in Blaine’s arm shift as he continued to mimic the piano riff.

Blaine’s arms had held him with tender strength and kept him safe for weeks; Blaine’s fingers had learned how to undo him and put him back together piece by piece; Blaine’s hands now held his heart, flawed and fragile as it was. Kurt found himself mesmerized by the movement, fixated with the sudden question of what else Blaine could do, if Kurt would only let him.

When he shifted around to Blaine’s side, it was almost instantaneous: Blaine set the laptop on the floor before twisting to hook his hands beneath Kurt’s thighs and pull him into his lap. The music still permeated the charged air between them, and Blaine met his kiss midway, tongue sliding against Kurt’s almost tentatively.

“Wait, wait,” Kurt whispered, pulling back and searching Blaine’s eyes with his own. “Blaine, I… I’ve never trusted anyone the way I trust you. You know that, right?” At Blaine’s nod, he cleared his throat and continued, “And you know that I… The way I feel about you, it’s not—“

“Stop,” Blaine interrupted, gently placing the tips of his fingers over Kurt’s mouth. “We’re not gonna do that right now.”

“Why not?” Kurt asked slowly.

“I didn’t tell you because I was expecting anything. Hoping, sure, but…” Blaine trailed off, and reached up to trace over Kurt’s cheekbones. “You don’t owe me anything, okay?”

Warmth bloomed in his bloodstream, and Kurt nodded mutely.

“Good. So, for now… Let it go,” he continued, dropping his hands to graze along Kurt’s thighs. “Stop thinking so much, and just be with me.”

Kurt pitched forward, falling into a kiss that felt shattering in the wake of Blaine’s words. All at once he was five years younger, fumbling and frenzied and trembling under the weight of the things he wanted. Blaine’s hands were still now and heavy on his thighs; he scooted forward in Blaine’s lap, pressing up into the firm touch and chasing the taste of something sweet that lingered on his tongue.

He reached down for Blaine’s hands and pushed them back, back, back until Blaine was cupping his ass and holding him right where he was, immobile save for the tight figure eights of his hips. Slow kisses contrasted Kurt’s impatient hands as they rushed their way beneath Blaine’s shirt and undershirt, pushing them up over his head to fall down the back of the couch.

Even with the feeling of Blaine growing hard beneath him, Kurt didn’t exactly know how to ask for what he suddenly wanted, and pulled away for a second to catch his breath. Blaine followed, one hand tipping Kurt’s head back; his mouth was warm and wet on Kurt’s throat and trailing to his collarbone.

Opening his eyes and staring blankly up at the ceiling, he breathed, “Do you remember what I said to you in West Virginia?” At Blaine’s questioning hum, he swallowed and added, “You asked me if I topped.”

“And you said exclusively,” he replied.

Before Blaine’s hand could work its way up into his still-damp hair, Kurt peeled it away and brought it to his cheek, pressing a kiss to Blaine’s palm and staring hard into his eyes. “I want you to. This time.”

“You…” Blaine trailed off, eyes wide. _“Kurt—“_

“Just be with me,” Kurt echoed, adding in a whisper, “like that. Please.”

Blaine looked at him searchingly for a moment, then pulled Kurt’s legs forward, wrapping them around his waist and carrying him to the bedroom. As they passed the laptop, Kurt heard the words, _“Now it’s found us, like I have found you. I don’t wanna run; just overwhelm me.”_ It was what Blaine had always done: overwhelm him in the best possible way.

They shed each other’s clothes quietly, revealing skin inch by inch, keeping eye contact as much as possible as they simply let their fingers retrace maps long since drawn, and this—this felt like something entirely new, entirely different, the intimacy of it staggering. Blaine’s hands shook as they trailed the length of Kurt’s bare arms, fingertips the merest whisper of a sensation across his skin and leaving his hair raised in their wake. Kurt licked his lips with a dry tongue; his eyes slipped closed as he finally let his foundations crumble and gave himself up. It was as easy as falling asleep at the end of a long day; a drift into floating, and Blaine’s mouth was soft on his and his hands were _everywhere,_ a breath of skin on skin.

Blaine stroked him fully hard as they kissed deeply, kisses that were like drowning in Blaine, falling further and harder and faster, and Blaine was breathing raggedly whenever they broke apart, like he was breaking the surface and coming up for air, too.

“I love you,” he whispered, taking his hands away and swallowing Kurt’s soft whine inside another kiss; for a second while he moved to the nightstand, there was nothing but heat as sunlight flooded Kurt’s skin. His head fell back onto the pillow and he took a few centering breaths, because he could barely stand this out-of-control cascade; this bone-deep need and vulnerability; this feeling that if he didn’t have Blaine then he would have nothing. It hurt so beautifully that he wanted to cry.

And then Blaine dropped a condom and a small bottle of lubricant onto the bed, brushed his thumb over Kurt’s lips and caught his eye. With nothing more than a nod, it became simple. It was him and Blaine—just him and Blaine, like always.

Everything in him loosened, uncoiled, and he surged upward to capture Blaine’s mouth, smiling a little against his lips as Blaine slowly moved to slide his thighs apart and settled between them. The shift was immediate, the tension was broken, and soon Kurt felt one of Blaine’s slicked fingers circling him before slowly pushing inside. He gasped at the soft pressure, full but not to bursting, and Blaine paused to look up at him.

 _Is this right?_ Kurt could almost hear him thinking, his curious and tentative expression speaking volumes. _Is this what you really want, or are you just trying to apologize?_

“Okay?” Blaine breathed the word as if Kurt had answered some unspoken benediction, and Kurt wriggled underneath him, bearing down and already wanting more.

He nodded slowly, biting his lip against a grin at the way Blaine’s shoulders slumped in relief. As Kurt watched, Blaine became steady; a second finger soon joined the first, and the trembling was gone as if a plug had been pulled.

Hours seemed to pack themselves into minutes, an incomprehensible but pleasant stretch the only point of Kurt’s focus, Blaine’s eyes dark and half-lidded as he checked and double-checked that what he was doing was still all right. By the time Kurt was panting, three fingers twisting inside him and sweat beading at his temples while Blaine brought him back to full hardness, he was lost to it.

Then Blaine’s mouth was covering his, giving him air to breathe as he pushed inside, inch by inch and mile by mile. The feeling of Blaine inside him and the look in his amber eyes when he pulled back—volumes of love and soft awe—was an ache in Kurt’s soul, a cut that ran so deep he knew he would carry it for the rest of his life.

Blaine started to move, barely at first, but it was a maelstrom of wildfire sensation; it was Kurt’s arching back and his fingers curling into the sheets; it was Blaine’s half-sobs, half-laughs choked into the hollow of his neck. It was push and pull and give and take; it was winding and reaching and burning heat that scorched him from the inside out; it was falling apart over and over and knowing, now, that Blaine would catch him.

It was everything.

Kurt was too close too soon, but he didn’t have it in him to ask Blaine to slow down; his toes were curling and his breath was reduced only to fragmented exhales of Blaine’s name. Chasing the rub against the soft swell of Blaine’s stomach, he hooked his arms around Blaine’s neck and pulled himself up. He pressed his forehead to Blaine’s temple just as he screwed his eyes shut and let go completely, Blaine’s arm sliding underneath him, supporting him and holding onto him like a lifeline.

Blaine followed him over the edge moments later, panting and gasping and whispering, “I love you,” again and again and again. Kurt drifted down, locked on those three words and truly wanting, for the first time, to return them. But everything was already bordering on too intense for him to comprehend; Blaine’s eyes were watery as he pulled back, and Kurt’s entire body felt like putty. He lay back and pulled Blaine down with him, shaking in the thick air that surrounded them.

Then it was sudden emptiness as Blaine slowly pulled out; it was damp, unsteady fingers carding into Kurt’s hair; it was a lazy kiss that bled into another, and then another. It was Kurt’s nerve endings recovering from overload; it was Blaine wrapped around him from head to toe, the pulse in his neck rabbit-quick; it was something unfurling and stretching awake.

And later, much later, when he was absolutely sure that Blaine was asleep, it was letting the words roll onto his tongue, their taste heady and dizzying. It was lying stone-still as he considered. It was looking over at Blaine, arms curled up beneath his pillow and his face peaceful with sleep, and whispering, “I love you, too.”

 

**Distance: 11,882 miles**

*

**Day 084: Sunday 9th December, 2012  
Tumble, Tumble (New Mexico)**

_“See you tomorrow, okay?”_

_“Wait—Blaine! We still haven’t decided what to watch in New Mexico!”_

_“No other road, no other way, no day but today!”_

 

 _“[Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/74880894755)”_ Blaine sang softly, inclining his head toward Kurt and smiling at the snow-blush on his cheeks. _“In the lane snow is glistening…”_

 _“A beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight,”_ Kurt joined in, _“walking in a winter wonderland.”_

Downtown Santa Fe certainly felt like one with its adobe buildings covered in snow and unlit farolitos lining the sidewalks and rooftops. Kurt’s head rested on Blaine’s shoulder, his hand clutching the crook of Blaine’s elbow, and they were sitting on a bench by the Plaza monument, quietly watching the world go by.

For the first time, it felt like they were a real couple. Boyfriends. An item. In a relationship. A _thing._ Blaine couldn’t decide whether it was how quickly Kurt seemed to be letting down his barriers, the atmosphere of Santa Fe giving everything the feeling that anything could happen, or a mixture of both. Whatever it was, he was glad for it.

“We should probably get going,” he murmured, checking his watch. “Didn’t you say the chapel closes at five?”

Kurt made a sound in the back of his throat as he stood and held out his hand for Blaine to take. “Since when do I need to make a noise when I stand up?” he grumbled.

“Old man,” Blaine joked, and they set off along the Old Santa Fe Trail. Taking in the adobe storefronts, he caught himself humming again—the same tune he’d had stuck in his head since waking up that morning. It felt somehow familiar, like it was something from childhood or a half-remembered dream—simple and upbeat, and though the words were on the tip of his tongue, they wouldn't reveal themselves. Buoyed up, however, on the good mood that had been blanketing his steps since Colorado, he let the dull frustration of it simply roll off him.

“What is that?” Kurt suddenly asked as they turned onto Water Street.

Blaine’s face warmed, and he explained, “I’ve had it in my head since I woke up and I can’t place it. Do you know it?” He hummed a couple more bars, louder this time. Kurt stopped in his tracks, giving him a look tinged with such sadness that Blaine fell silent.

“Kurt?” he ventured after a moment.

“Don’t know it. Sorry,” he said in a clipped tone, burying his hands in his pockets and taking off again.

 _What just happened?_ Blaine thought, standing still for a second before catching up. There was a tension in the set of Kurt’s shoulders that had been decidedly absent the past couple of days, and Blaine tried not to think too much about it, even though he had the sudden feeling that he’d made some awful misstep.

As they set foot inside Loretto Chapel moments later, they stood still, both taking in the neat pews, decorated with greenery and twinkling lights for Christmas, and the ornately designed marble stonework over the altar. Carvings of saints stood sentinel, and the vaulted ceilings at the back of the chapel were intricately painted in a swirling red and gold design. To their right was what they had apparently come to see: the miraculous staircase.

“So what is it with this staircase?” Blaine asked, his voice hushed though the chapel was otherwise empty. He leaned into Kurt and gently nudged his shoulder.

“The story goes that the chapel architect died,” Kurt began, walking toward the staircase and beginning to climb it. Blaine smiled—Kurt had always had a little flair for the dramatic. “And the builders realized that there was no stairway to the loft included in the designs. The Sisters of Loretto prayed to Saint Joseph for divine intervention for nine days straight, and on the tenth day, a man appeared.

“He told the nuns that he’d build them a staircase, but that he’d need complete privacy in order to do it,” Kurt continued from halfway up. “He locked himself in the chapel for three months, and as soon as the staircase was finished, he left. No one knew who he was, and he was never seen or heard from again.”

“And what’s the miracle?” Blaine asked, sliding his hand over the banister—also strung with greenery and lights—and following him up the staircase.

“The construction,” Kurt answered, leaning over the railing of the loft. “No nails, no visible means of support… Apparently, it still has some experts baffled. The Sisters eventually decided that the man was Saint Joseph himself come to answer their prayers.”

Blaine clasped his hands together, forearms resting on the railing as he stood close to Kurt and looked out over the small chapel. “What would we film here?” he asked quietly, trying to see the place through Kurt’s eyes.

Kurt was quiet for a moment, his gaze roving the ceilings and the pews below. “I don’t know,” he said at length. Blaine pursed his lips, concealing his surprise—Kurt was the one who had the universes inside his head, and Blaine was the one who riffed off of them.

“Funeral?” he suggested.

 _“No,”_ Kurt said forcefully with a vehement shake of his head, and Blaine scrabbled around for a different idea.

“Nice place for a wedding, maybe,” he murmured quickly, straightening and stretching his arms out in front of him. He framed a shot in a deliberately bad way, knowing that Kurt wouldn’t be able to resist correcting him—which he did after a moment, covering Blaine’s hands with his own and creating a panning shot that began right below them and traveled across the pews right to the altar.

“Native Santa Feans,” he said quietly, his hands lingering on top of Blaine’s.

“Nah,” Blaine said. “Two guys who’ve been in love with each other forever but haven’t seen each other in years. They run into each other here, and finally admit everything.”

“Why here?” Kurt asked.

“This place, it…” Blaine trailed off, dropping his hands and clutching the railing as he looked down. “Do you get the feeling that everything would be better if you just stayed here for a while and figured your shit out?”

“It does have something,” Kurt agreed. “Even more so than where we were yesterday.”

The previous day, they had visited Madrid—“It’s pronounced _MAD-rid,_ not _Ma-DRID_ like in Spain,” Kurt had told him—and found themselves quite taken with the quirky, artsy little town that lay in the Ortiz Mountains, twenty minutes from Santa Fe on the Turquoise Trail. Were it not for the colorful fronts of the shops and matchstick houses, Blaine might have felt like he’d stepped into a Spaghetti Western.

They had spent the entire day wandering the streets of the town, walking in and out of stores and restaurants and visiting the Old Coal Town Museum, finally ending up at the Mine Shaft Tavern and only being able to drink two beers before they were tipsy, the elevation making one drink feel like three.

Blaine nodded, and they paused only a moment longer before both seeming to silently agree that it was time to leave.

It was mostly dark by the time they stepped outside, and it was like walking into a different world—the Christmas lights had burst into life, the farolitos lining the sidewalks and rooftops lit as if by magic. Something about it left them in a companionable kind of quiet as they took it all in, Kurt’s hand finding the crook of Blaine's elbow once again, and they set off down Water Street toward the Blue Corn Cafe.

 

They were so tipsy on margaritas by the end of their dinner—despite both eating more than their fill of tamales and calabacitas and carne avodava—that Kurt barely put up a fight when Blaine bought him one of the café’s branded t-shirts. He put up even less of a fight when Blaine dragged him to the back of the bus to the campground and spent their fifteen-minute journey lavishing attention on his neck, chasing the scent of Jean Paul Gaultier that always lingered around his pulse point.

Blaine could feel the heat between them as he led Kurt inside the R.V., but it was a slow burn, not a hunger to be immediately sated. Instead they both changed into pajamas and curled up under the covers of the bed, automatically gravitating together in the middle. Blaine set up his laptop to play _RENT,_ and they sang along to all of the songs, and the lingering tension drained out of Kurt by degrees.

Despite every song they sang together, Blaine’s mind kept wandering back to that simple tune with which he’d awoken, the words still on the tip of his tongue. He kept biting back the urge to start humming it, something almost ominous growing in the back of his mind, scant memories beginning to knit themselves into a repeating pattern of motion…

And suddenly, woven before him was a picture of starting clarity: Saturday sleepovers at Kurt’s house; watching The Lion King every single week because it was their movie; heading up to Kurt’s room after he’d watched Kurt standing next to Elizabeth at the sink, their bright voices singing The Dishes Song.

_“Scrub, scrub, scrub 'til the dishes are done, dry, dry, dry 'til the bubbles are gone…”_

“Shut up,” Kurt whispered harshly, and Blaine could have punched himself in the face, not even realizing that he’d been singing the words out loud.

“I'm—fuck, I’m sorry,” Blaine got out, but Kurt was already reeling away from him, shaking violently, and it was as if Blaine could suddenly see the legion of paper cut scars that lived beneath the surface of his skin. Angel was dying on the screen, Collins holding her close as Mimi and Roger sang of life going on but dying without each other, and Kurt was scrambling out of the bed too quickly for Blaine to catch him, to hold him and kiss him and make him forget. “Kurt, wait!”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Kurt yelled, and he was running now, his feet bare. He wrenched open the door to the R.V., taking off into darkness that almost swallowed him whole as Blaine ran after him.

The gravel was sharp beneath his feet but still he followed, Kurt’s silhouette outlined by the bright white lights that hung from the covered pavilion at the end of the campground. Blood was rushing in his ears and he wanted to stop, lean over and empty the contents of his stomach onto the ground at what he’d done without even realizing, but everything in him was screaming to get to Kurt.

It was like slow motion, watching him stumble up the steps to the pavilion and be brought to his knees, hunched over and barely holding himself up, his body wracked with sobs. The sight made Blaine feel like he was suffocating. Because Kurt didn't cry. Ever.

Just like he had fourteen years earlier, two thousand five hundred miles away under a midnight sky in January, he circled around in front of Kurt and stood there. The soles of his feet stung and tingled against the cold wooden floor, and he hated himself for not knowing what to do. Kurt’s sobs intensified until he sounded like a wounded animal, until he was barely breathing, and Blaine fell to his knees, cupping Kurt’s jaw and forcing his head upward.

“Look at me,” he said. “Sweetheart, look at me. I need you to breathe.”

It had been fourteen years, but Blaine still recognized the unique and wrenching shade of green that flushed Kurt's irises when he cried. It was somewhere between lime and pistachio; the color of sun-bleached grass outlined in phthalo.

“Get away from me,” Kurt ground out, staring him straight in the eyes for a moment of stone-cold resolve before his face crumpled and he managed to get to his feet, wrapping his arms around his middle.

“Kurt, I’m _sorry,_ I—I never meant to—“

“Sh-shut up, just shut up, please _stop talking,_ I _can’t—“_

“Kurt, it’s okay. It’s okay, I understand,” he rambled.

“Don’t say that,” Kurt said, his voice ragged. “Don’t say you _understand.”_

“I lost someone, too,” Blaine reminded him gently. “Of course I understand.”

“No, you _don’t._ And just because I finally let you fuck me, don’t think it means you know every fucking thing about me,” Kurt spat, finally looking Blaine in the eye. The words hit Blaine like a slap in the face and he broke the look, his gaze landing on Kurt’s right hand; his thumb was working back and forth over the crease of his index finger.

“That’s not fair,” he said in a small voice, shaking his head and chancing a glance back up.

“Oh, okay, let’s talk about _fair,”_ Kurt said, rounding on him with fire in his eyes. “It’s not _fair_ that she got taken away from me just like _that,_ like she wasn’t my whole world. It’s not _fair_ that all I have of her is a fucking dresser and some stupid song. It’s not _fair_ that I have to carry around this huge, gaping hole in my chest when some days it feels like it’s all I can do just to put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes it feels like I’m _bleeding_ her, Blaine. Do you _understand_ that?”

A split-second was all it took for Blaine to overcome his indecision; he closed the distance between them and wrapped Kurt up in his arms. Kurt struggled against his grip, his half-clenched fists pounding dully against Blaine’s chest, but Blaine only tightened his hold, carding his fingers through the back of Kurt’s hair as Kurt finally went lax against him, still trembling and sobbing.

“I’m here. I’m here; I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered, not knowing what else to do. If it had been anyone else, he would have known. Whenever his mom was upset, he would bring her sweet tea and talk to her about tornadoes. After Tom had broken up with his girlfriend of four years, they went out to drink and commiserate. There had even been one occasion in freshman year when April had come looking for Kurt after a particularly nasty altercation with her roommate, and they had ended up making popcorn and watching _Broken Flowers,_ a movie she’d loved so much that it was how Blaine had nicknamed her ‘Flower.’

The Kurt in his arms, however, the Kurt whose knees were buckling underneath the weight of his sorrow and grief and such a fundamental paradigm shift… Blaine didn’t know how to help other than sink to the ground with him.

Kurt took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled away, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and looking miserably at the floor. “I’m sorry. For what I said before, and… This,” he said, shaking his head and blinking back more tears. His hand fell to his lap, his thumb rubbing over his index finger again.

“You’re not Catholic,” Blaine blurted.

“What?” Kurt asked.

“The whole guilt thing isn’t hereditary, you know,” Blaine joked weakly, gesturing to his hand and adding, “Plus, you look like my grandma at church.”

Kurt looked down at his hand like he hadn’t even realized what he was doing. “She had a rosary that I used to hold. After,” he explained. He flexed his fingers and sniffed harshly, something in his face shuttering.

“You don’t need to wear the mask around me. You know that, right?” Blaine asked.

Kurt let out a hollow laugh. “Are you my therapist now? You took _one_ psych class, B,” he said, but there was no venom behind the words.

“Come on,” Blaine said, tugging Kurt to his feet. “Come on back to me.”

“I didn’t—“ Kurt began, but stopped and looked at Blaine almost sheepishly. “Okay.”

A chill swept over them both as the breeze picked up, but Blaine didn’t hurry their short walk back to the R.V., even when they were both wincing their way across the gravel. The dim moonlight picked out the tears that were still rolling down Kurt’s face—he wasn’t done yet, not by a long shot—and it wasn’t until they were back inside and passing the bathroom that Blaine realized one small thing that he could do.

He pressed a kiss into Kurt’s hair and nudged him toward the bedroom before ducking into the bathroom and rifling through the cabinets until he found what he needed.

Kurt was sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees when Blaine entered the bedroom; slowly, he climbed onto the bed next to him and waited until Kurt unfolded before peeling open the Band-Aid and sticking it onto the fabric of Kurt’s shirt, right over his heart. Kurt did nothing but blink down at it for five long seconds, and then he pitched forward into Blaine’s arms as his sobs turned frantic again.

Blaine could feel the tears seeping through his thin shirt and onto his chest; it was like Kurt was made of tears, like he'd been saving them all up for this one night where Blaine would finally be able to reach up to him, catch him as he tumbled down, and hold him together. His chest _hurt,_ the tug of being needed spreading throughout him and filling him up in the most impossibly hollow way. And in that moment, Kurt’s fingers tightening into the cotton of his shirt as he cried himself out, Blaine realized that he didn’t need to be some knight in shining armor, riding in to save the day and make everything better. He needed to be the two-hundred-year-old oak tree, the pillar of strength rooted to the earth. He needed to be the anchor, the tether, the reason to come back and endure.

When Kurt had finally fallen asleep, Blaine tucked him under the covers and breathed deeply when Kurt immediately curled into his usual position. Something about his face had changed; the lines in his forehead were gradually easing out. He looked younger; more at peace… Beautiful.

Pulling the door closed behind him in the hope that Kurt would just continue to sleep, he made his way through to the living area with every intention of giving him some space and spending the night on the couch. The magnets on the refrigerator caught his eye, though, and he took in Kurt’s message with a tired smile: _“Emotion, devotion, to causing a commotion, creation, vacation, mucho masturbation.”_

His eyes roved the rest of the magnets, most of them left over from his grandfather’s many road trips, and he let his fingers drift over one in particular, shaped into the outline of Arizona and proudly proclaiming in silver and teal, _The Grand Canyon State._

After only the briefest of pauses, he pulled the magnet from the fridge and took it with him to the cab. He scrolled through his iPod until he found the song he was looking for, and as Melissa Etheridge began to softly serenade him, _“Come on, baby. Let’s get out of this town…”_ he started the engine.

He knew exactly where he was going.

 

**Distance: 12,146 miles**

*

**Day 085: Monday 10th December, 2012  
Courage (Arizona)**

_“It’s LGBT, it has Felicity Huffman—“_

_“Sold, oh my god, sold.”_

_“Excellent. Write that down:_ Transamerica _for Arizona.”_

 

When Kurt awoke the next morning, his breath stung his raw throat and his eyes still felt full with the bittersweet ache of catharsis. There was also the matter of Blaine sitting on the edge of the bed, gently pushing back Kurt’s hair and looking like he hadn't slept all night.

“Morning,” he said, a smile that looked reluctant tugging at his mouth.

“Morning,” Kurt rasped, shifting under the covers. “What time is it?”

“After seven,” Blaine said. “How’d you sleep?”

“Better than I have in years, actually,” he answered at length. “You?”

“I haven’t slept yet,” Blaine said quietly, his hand dropping and tracing the line of Kurt’s jaw. “There was something I had to do.”

“And it took you nine hours?”

“Eight, actually.”

“You didn’t go out and get lost, did you?”

“No. But I did drink way too much coffee.”

“Well, that’s nothing new,” Kurt said, suppressing a yawn. “I’m guessing I’m awake for a reason?”

“Put on the warmest clothes you own,” Blaine said, his hand falling away, “and meet me by the door in five minutes.”

“What’s going on?” Kurt asked, sitting up and catching Blaine’s wrist as he stood to leave.

“You’ll see,” Blaine sing-songed, his voice cracking and choked with fatigue. With nothing but an exaggerated wink, he ducked out of the bedroom and Kurt was left alone.

He stayed for a moment more, stretching out into the warmth of the bed and listening to the air settle. He felt as if his heart had been cracked open, but instead of it making him want to claw himself back together and patch up his fault lines, it made him want… Blaine. Openly, honestly, and completely—almost as if Blaine had passed some kind of test neither of them were aware had been set.

Kurt glanced down at the front of his pajama shirt, peeled off the Band-Aid, and stuck it directly onto the skin over his heart.

He dressed quickly and simply: thick, charcoal gray jeans, a white shirt and a soft wool sweater, finished off with a black scarf and gloves. He was feeling somehow rebellious, like he needed to be contained—there was lightning in his veins, some kind of kinetic energy thrumming beneath his skin, and the muted colors helped. Avoiding his reflection, because his hair was probably an unmitigated bed-head disaster, he headed out to meet Blaine, who was bundled up in his navy duffel coat and waiting, as promised, by the door.

The R.V. was shrouded in darkness, all of the blinds drawn and the lights switched off. It carried the same atmosphere as their teenage ‘runaway’ nights had, when Kurt would stay over at Blaine’s house and they’d sneak out for a bike ride up to Coffin Pond long after dark.

“Come here,” Blaine murmured. He held out a hand to Kurt, the other holding his scarf.

“You’re starting to freak me out,” Kurt said as he drew closer. “Seriously, what’s going on?”

“Can I blindfold you?”

“I—what?”

Grinning sheepishly, Blaine held up the scarf. “There’s something I want to show you, but I don’t want you to see it ‘til we get there. It’s only a couple minutes’ walk.”

Kurt cast his gaze around the interior of the R.V., the threads drawing together in his mind. “We’re not in Santa Fe anymore, are we?”

Blaine bit his lip and shook his head. “Nope.”

Kurt regarded him coolly for a moment before stepping forward and letting Blaine blindfold him, tucking the lower half of the scarf up over his nose so that he could breathe. And then, as if it was the easiest thing in the world, he let himself be led: down the steps and out the door; along smooth and even ground which gave away nothing when Kurt tipped his head back to try and see around him; down a gradual incline that led to an uneven set of winding steps.

The world around him was silent, barely even any birds singing a dawn song to accompany them, and he was grateful that there seemed to be no one else around as Blaine patiently guided him down the steps, Kurt's arm occasionally flailing for purchase where there was none to be found.

“How much far—“ Kurt began, but stopped short when he felt some sort of fence pressing gently against his lower half. “Blaine?”

“I think it’s about to start,” he replied, dropping Kurt's hand and loosening the blindfold. “Are you ready?”

“I don't even—“

Bright, dawn-pale sky stretched for miles and miles, all the way to the horizon, and Kurt squinted against the sudden harshness. Then, like a blurry long-lens shot suddenly pulled into focus, the land resolved itself into buttes and canyons and giant sprawls of sedimentary rock. His breath punched out in a single, disbelieving huff and a wave of dizziness overtook him, as if every molecule of oxygen had left his body at once.

A sliver of sunlight appeared to the east, and Kurt’s eyes drank in the pink and purple and orange hues that transformed the rock.

“It looks like it’s breathing,” he whispered.

Blaine chuckled behind him, wrapping his arms around Kurt’s waist and hooking his chin over his shoulder. “Pretty amazing, right?”

Kurt turned in his arms, taking in the splinters of green and gold in his eyes for a moment before pressing his forehead against Blaine’s temple and telling him quietly, “You make everything else go away.”

“Nah,” Blaine said, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek.

“You do, though,” Kurt said, pulling back and meeting his eyes fully. “Everything that happened last night, it… No one’s ever done anything like that for me before, and now _this…”_

“I figured you needed something good to wake up to. That’s all,” Blaine said with a shrug.

Kurt wanted to tell Blaine that he loved him—the words were on the tip of his tongue, their taste as thick and full as when he’d whispered them to Blaine’s sleeping form in Colorado, but the previous night still weighed heavily on him. He didn’t want to say it when the cracks inside him still simmered with the fury of sleeping giants; he needed some measure of peace to it all.

So instead, he held onto the railing behind him and leaned back, looking over his shoulder at the land of a rising sun. Blaine dropped his head to rest on Kurt’s chest, his eyes drifting closed and a smile playing about his lips when Kurt told him he was missing it.

“We’ve been here for a while, you know. I came up earlier,” he replied tiredly. “And we’ve got tomorrow.”

“I can’t believe you drove all night to get here,” Kurt said.

“Well, you took me to Four Corners,” Blaine pointed out.

“Did you stop anywhere?”

“Yeah, at about two-thirty. There was a Denny’s in Holbrook.”

“Kinda glad I wasn’t awake.”

“Mm. You needed to sleep.”

“Thank you. For last night,” Kurt said, resting his head atop Blaine’s. “And for everything else.”

“You’re welcome,” Blaine said around a yawn; Kurt could feel the warm exhalation even through his layers.

Clearing his throat, wanting to offer _something,_ he said, “Blaine, you—you know I’m getting there, right?”

“Hmm?”

“With… With us. You know I’m getting there, don’t you?”

Only silence greeted him, stretching so taut that Kurt thought it might snap back like an elastic band at any moment—until Blaine’s arms went limp, and Kurt realized that he had fallen asleep. He allowed himself a moment to let out a bone-deep sigh before hooking his arms underneath Blaine’s and hauling him to his feet.

“You fell asleep on me,” Kurt told him as he blinked himself awake. “Literally.”

“Did not,” Blaine grumbled, rubbing his eyes and looking at him blearily. “Okay, maybe I did.”

“Come on. Let’s get you back to the R.V., Sleeping Beauty,” Kurt said, taking his hand and leading him away from the fence.

“Is that my Disney character?” Blaine asked.

“I’d actually say Rapunzel. Your hair grows fast enough,” Kurt replied, carding his hand through Blaine’s curls until Blaine was scrunching his nose and batting his hand away.

“If my hair was that long, I’d look like Brian May,” he said, and Kurt laughed. As they reached the top of the steps, Blaine tugged on his sleeve and turned back to the face the sunrise. Quietly, and looking at Kurt with a gaze too intense for his meaning to be missed, he asked, “Do you think we’d fly if we jumped?”

“The wings need a few more tweaks, but… Soon,” Kurt said at length. He didn’t miss the way Blaine’s face lit up, brighter than the sun that had, by now, almost fully cleared the horizon. “Now, come on. There’s a bed with your name on it.”

“Sheets, too. Literally.”

“Reason number seventy-five that your mother will always confuse me.”

 

“So _where_ did you meet this guy?” Blaine asked as they took a seat on one of the benches behind the campfire, leaning in to speak directly into Kurt’s ear.

“At the store, when I went for Advil,” Kurt replied, resting his head on Blaine’s shoulder and inhaling deeply.

After both having slept most of the day away, Kurt had woken late in the afternoon with images of a dream still flashing in his mind: an empty dance floor littered with debris; a black gymnastic ribbon that had become fire when he’d picked it up; dancing with it until everything was alight; walking through the flames toward a glass door. The handle had almost been within reach when Kurt had awoken, head throbbing and half-abandoned sentiments fizzling on his tongue.

It was at the Market Plaza store that he’d run into Elliott: six feet tall; broad shoulders and muscled arms barely concealed by his regulation green polo; black hair shot through with honey; green eyes subtly outlined in black, and an arresting, sultry smile that, only months previously, would have driven Kurt crazy.

“We got talking,” Kurt continued, “and his best friend’s dad owns the place, so they come up every Monday to hang out, spin, blow off some steam… In the summer they put on shows for the kids.”

He scanned the clearing, taking in the campfire and the rows of benches set up behind it, as if the campfire were some sort of platform from which one could preach. There were five or six couples sprawled across the benches and blankets strewn haphazardly around the campfire, and none of them had paid Kurt and Blaine’s arrival any attention; all of their eyes were transfixed on Elliott, who was halfway through a slow, sensuous fire poi routine set to [a Matt Corby song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/74881226545) that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in a _Sons of Anarchy_ episode.

The poi he was using were made of steel wool; every weave and reel resulted in a cascade of sparks, and as the sound built and built to a thumping, insane crescendo, Elliott raised his arms up over his head and spun the poi together. Sparks showered down around him, carpeting the ground and eliciting gasps from a couple of the girls.

Kurt and Blaine applauded and cheered along with everyone else, laughing at his theatrical entertainer’s bow. He unwound the poi from his hands and tossed them to the side as they burned out, and his place was taken by a small, curvy blonde in jeans and a leather jacket. She was carrying two five-pronged cathedral fans, and while she worked herself through a few warm-ups, Elliott jogged over.

“Kurt! So glad you came,” he said, slightly out of breath and shooting him an infectious smile before taking a seat and turning his attention to Blaine. “And you must be the boyfriend Kurt was telling me about.”

Blaine threw a look his way that was a mixture of confusion and surprise, and Kurt finally understood what it meant to wish that a chasm would open up beneath his feet. Without meeting either of their gazes, he introduced them and prayed for a change of subject.

“How long have you guys been together?” Elliott asked, glancing between them with an easy openness to his expression, and Kurt cursed his luck.

“You tell him, sweetheart,” Blaine said, and nudged his side.

Kurt sucked in a deep breath to keep from committing murder, forced a smile, and said, “We’ve been best friends since we were little, but things didn’t… _Change,_ I guess, ‘til this trip.”

“Well, I’m happy for you,” Elliott said, adding, “and you guys are from Maine, right? You just got marriage there?”

Kurt bristled even more, mostly at the memory of that walking-on-broken-glass night in Wisconsin, and nodded with a tight smile. “You were right, by the way,” he said, finally finding the wherewithal to redirect the conversation. “That routine was incredible.”

“Ah, it’s all in finding the right music,” Elliott said, waving off the praise and gesturing to the blonde girl. She was warming up with a few basic turns and sweeps, waving the fans up and down in a way that made it look like she had wings. “Now, Dani is something else. She’s an _artist.”_

“Just like Kurt,” Blaine interjected, and as he wound his arm around Kurt’s waist, Kurt couldn’t help but smile a little, even though it had been a long time since he’d felt like one. The thought stung more than he’d let it in months. “I filmed him for a music video once, and his routines are beautiful.”

“You’re up next, then,” Elliott said.

“What? No, I—I…” Kurt spluttered. “I haven’t spun for a couple years.”

“Not taking no for an answer,” Elliott sing-songed, and got to his feet just as Dani’s fans lit up as brightly as fireworks. “Come over once she’s done and we’ll get you set up.”

“Okay,” Kurt said weakly, and after Elliott had left them to join a couple of his friends sitting closer to where Dani was spinning and twirling, Blaine leaned over and pressed a kiss beneath Kurt’s jaw.

“Boyfriend, huh?” he asked.

“He was about to hit on me,” Kurt said; it wasn’t a lie, but neither was it the truth. “I had to say _something.”_

He felt more than saw Blaine’s small, knowing smile, heard his murmured, “Okay,” and that same electricity lingering in his bloodstream almost had him jittering with the itch to spin again, to feel every minute shift of the chains as he created his own escape of patterns and heat and light.

“What if I’ve forgotten everything?” he asked.

“I’ll come stand right in front of you, if you want. Pretty good incentive for not fucking up,” Blaine offered, but before Kurt had even rolled his eyes, he added firmly, “Stop second-guessing yourself, and go be an artist. It’s who she taught you to be.”

Struck dumb with the truth of Blaine’s words, Kurt let himself relax into his hold for the rest of Dani’s kinetic light show, and it felt like no time at all that her cathedral fans were snuffing out and Elliott was waving him over. Blaine lightly squeezed his hand, and Kurt left everything behind except the energy that had been bubbling inside him all day.

He flexed his fingers and rolled his wrists as he walked down the aisle separating the rows of benches, loosening up his joints ready to spin. _Breathe,_ he reminded himself as he shook out his shoulders and rolled his neck, striding over to Elliott with purpose. He accepted two poi from a rake-thin teenage boy Elliott introduced as Sean, and turned to Dani to congratulate her on her performance.

“Thank you!” she said, bouncing on her toes and clapping her hands together before gesturing to the small but powerful iPod dock standing on a tree stump. “Did you bring music for your routine?”

Kurt shook his head. “I’m woefully under-prepared.”

“Oh, that’s okay! Don’t even worry about it. What kinda stuff do you like?”

“Anything that has a good beat and makes me feel.”

She looked thoughtful for a second, and strode over to the dock, calling back to him, “I have a couple friends in Vancouver, and they sent me a demo EP for this band called The Belle Game. I’m obsessed with this one song, _[River](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/74881434749),_ right now.”

“Sounds good to me,” Kurt said, having gotten used to improvising to whichever songs the leader of his college fire club had picked each week.

The song began with an almost dream-like quality that sounded like harps over guitars; Dani gave him a cute smile and thumbs-up as she passed by on her way to a seat, and Kurt was suddenly aware of all eyes on him. He shook off the nerves and wrapped the poi handles around his hands, striding with purpose over to the campfire to light them before stepping back and taking a deep breath.

 _“There’s a place that I’ve found,”_ were the lyrics that got him started, spinning the poi in a simple butterfly formation. _“Full of sins that you’ve drowned. I’ve been your river, I’ve been your river since we were kids.”_

The sounds of fire whipped past him on each spin, the old familiar heat wrapping around him; he picked up on the song’s instrumental interlude—a plucking of strings that sounded as chaotic and treacherous as his own heart—and swept himself up into a four-beat weave, relaxing his body and letting himself move from side to side.

_“There’s a rhyme and a case for the things you’ve misplaced.”_

Corkscrew reels, this time: shortening the chains to spin in front of him and then up and over his head. Easy moves that he could never have forgotten, and he bit back a smile, concentrating on feeling the music and anticipating the change in beat—which exploded into the chorus: _“Take a little more, take a little more from me.”_

The lightning flowed through Kurt’s arms and out into the poi, consumed by the flames as he leapt onto his toes and into one of his signature variations on a six-petal flower. He pushed the fire away and pulled it back, dancing with it until it felt like an extension of himself and he wielded the control over it for a transitional float, running the poi at vertical parallels.

Kurt’s every nerve was aflame; he was invincible; he was on the edge of the world; he was a superhero. The music was for him, just for him, and he was lightning shattering out of a jar; pure id as he spiraled higher and higher into the stratosphere.

It was as he was performing a simple but modified alternating barrel roll, leaning back with one leg raised into the air, that he caught sight of Blaine—no longer seated but standing at the end of the aisle between the benches. He was transfixed, the weight of his gaze something that would normally have felt heavier than Kurt could bear, but this time only spurred him on—he dipped back as far as he could without losing balance and righted himself with a scissor kick.

_“Do you feel me at your side? I’ve been filled with all you denied.”_

Kurt almost stopped short but managed to cover with another float, the words catching him off-guard and opening his eyes all at once to the truth of… Of everything, every last word of encouragement spoken to him throughout the course of their road trip: Andrew telling him to make the mistakes first; the tour guide in Virginia thinking they were a couple; Nan leaving no room for argument in informing them that they belonged to one another back in South Carolina; his own father making clear on Thanksgiving what Kurt had still refused to see; even the mysterious F, sending him music to soundtrack what he could no longer deny was a love story.

_“Take a little more, take a little more, take a little more from me…”_

And then there was Blaine: telling him he’d had a teenage crush on him in Kentucky; a stirrer poking out of his mouth in Ohio; pushing him to sing in Michigan; saving his life in Indiana; kissing air into his lungs underwater in Minnesota; confessing his feelings in Wyoming; making love to him in Colorado; holding him together with a single Band-Aid in New Mexico. For all his faults, he was the best person Kurt had ever known, and love would either tear them apart or give them a lifelong happy ending.

He lost himself—in chasing the sun, in complex, layered butterfly and flower formations, in barrel rolls and windmills and threading the needle—until he was nothing but music and flame, holding a white carnation in his lap and wishing for all the world that Blaine would awake in him a different kind of fire, the fire that had lain dormant until the first brush of lips with the world ending beneath their feet.

What lay just around the corner, or in six months, or in ten years… None of it mattered when Kurt was here and Blaine was—

Standing right in front of him, just out of reach of the poi as they flickered out with the song’s final fade, watching him as if he were something sacred to behold. There was applause and cheering over the perpetual crackle of the campfire, but it fell into the kind of silence that could only be found in the wake of a storm as Kurt’s world narrowed to Blaine. It was that small measure of peace he’d been needing.

Some people fell quickly and easily into love, inhaling it like air and needing only that. Kurt had fumbled and tripped and misstepped his way to the edge of a cliff, and he didn’t know what was waiting at the bottom except Blaine, but it didn’t matter.

Kurt jumped.

“I love you,” he breathed, the extinguished poi hanging limply from his hands.

Blaine froze, his eyes widening and lips parting, a single puff of white the only sign that he was breathing at all. Seconds seemed bottomless, Kurt watching and waiting for something—anything—to let him know that he hadn’t just cast himself into oblivion.

And then Blaine stepped forward and pulled Kurt to him with crushing force, rocked forward onto his tiptoes, pressed his forehead to Kurt’s temple, and whispered, “I love you, too.”

…and Kurt landed.

 

**Distance: 12,617 miles**

*

**Day 088: Thursday 13th December, 2012  
Pillow Talk (Nevada)**

_“I don’t get why you’re fighting me on this, Kurt. It’s_ Oceans Eleven, _I mean…”_

_“Okay, okay. I get it. We’re not killing your George Clooney boner any time soon. So fine.”_

_“Excellent. Onto Califor—“_

 

If Blaine’s life were a movie, their time in Vegas would be the montage scene.

He could see it laid out before him as clear as crystal, so perfectly formed in his mind that he knew every shot, every transition, every angle. The quiet, strumming introduction of [_King and Lionheart_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/74881894433) by Of Monsters And Men would undercut the meeting of their lips by the campfire, Kurt dropping his extinguished poi to the ground and linking their fingers, neither of them heeding the wolf whistles and catcalls of their audience.

 _“And we won’t run, and we won’t run, and we won’t run,”_ would be the words that accompanied their hustle back to the R.V., the fires stoked and the engines starting. Fades into smiles across the space of the cab; Blaine’s hand riding the air outside the window as they sped west along I-40; a panoramic shot of the hotel room on the Las Vegas Expressway that he’d booked on a whim. Standard stock shots of the lights and sights of Vegas itself; Kurt running down the strip with Blaine’s hand tangled up in his, looking for all the world that he was the happiest he’d ever been.

The song’s quiet heart but perfect sentiment would help the juxtaposing flow of slow, soul-deep kisses in dark corners of casinos against their fast entrances and exits to each and every gaudy attraction they could find. The cameras would capture them splitting their sides laughing as they took stupid photos of one another at Tussaud’s; Kurt complaining about the smell of elephant poop inside the Adventuredome at Circus Circus; sitting in the mezzanine at Showgirls and loosely holding hands over the armrest; getting tossed out of the Neon Museum for ditching the guided tour in favor of a too-heated make out behind the dead Stardust sign. And as it faded into the hushed interlude, darkened shots of hands knotted in sheets, in hair, tangling together with a tight squeeze of release; the gentle caress of Kurt’s fingers against Blaine’s cheek, bringing him drifting downward and back to the earth.

One last series of shots would accompany the song’s wind to its close: fast kisses, laughing kisses, desperate kisses; Kurt smiling softly at him from the bathtub through the open bathroom door; splitting a bottle of too-expensive champagne down in the bar before returning to their room.

Everything about it would be disgustingly cheesy, and Blaine would love every perfect second—because perfect was exactly what the last three days had been. It made him miss film-making in a new way, one that had him scribbling stray thoughts and notes onto scraps of paper, humming the riffs and hooks floating through his mind, and wanting more than anything to fulfil his and Kurt’s dreams of creating beautiful things together.

“We must be the only two people ever to come to Vegas and not gamble a cent,” he mused to a sleepy Kurt, who had only just awoken from the doze he’d fallen into after they’d come back to the hotel room. They’d been almost drunk and rutting against one another before the door had even closed behind them, and somehow they’d managed to make it to the bed, a trail of clothes left in their wake. Now they lay beneath soft sheets and blankets with all of the lights off, but the drapes drawn back from the windows in the hope that they would see the Geminid meteors streaking by over the mountains.

“The house always wins,” Kurt replied sleepily. “And besides, I kind of already gambled a lot the other night.”

“Nah,” Blaine said, scooting down and turning onto his side. “I was a sure thing.”

“Exactly,” Kurt said, looking at him through one eye. “The house always wins.”

The pause that befell their conversation was comfortable, knowing, the kind of pause that didn’t need to be filled with awkward glances or tentative touches—so much was out in the open, now. The walls had crumbled, leaving no rubble but a foundation upon which they could build whatever they wanted, and even without the champagne, Blaine was giddy with it.

“So,” he said at length. “We’ve had two days in Vegas, done every tacky tourist thing we could think of, you’ve fucked me every which way to Sunday—and it’s only Thursday—and now we’re here.”

“That about sums it up,” Kurt replied, tracing Blaine’s lips and then leaning in to kiss each one in turn.

“There isn’t anything left that we haven’t done?” Blaine asked.

“Not that I can think of.”

“No fantasies about going to that drive-thru chapel?”

Kurt’s bark of laughter was music. “Sure, let’s do it. I think I have a condom in my wallet from graduation that could be my something old.”

“And we have blue M&Ms,” Blaine supplied.

“Oh! Maybe you’ll let me borrow that tie of yours that I’m _never_ allowed to borrow.”

“And I can wear the scarf you bought yesterday.”

“Ah, Nevada,” Kurt sighed almost wistfully. “If only.”

“If only,” Blaine echoed, and Kurt looked at him with a soft, tender smile.

“What, are we playing Relationship Chicken now?” he asked after a moment.

“Well, we both clean up,” Blaine joked, and scooted forward under the covers, sliding his thigh between Kurt’s.

“Mmm, you in that suit at Toby and Andrew’s wedding…” Kurt trailed off, shuffling up into the contact.

“Yeah?”

“You really have no idea, do you?”

His face warming, Blaine turned his face into the pillow for a second—and then something occurred to him, and he had to look back up.

“It’s rude to stare,” Kurt said after a few moments had passed.

“You said ‘relationship,’” Blaine murmured, grinning at him.

“Shut up,” Kurt muttered, dropping his eyes, but his own smile betrayed him.

“So… Are we boyfriends now?” Blaine teased, ducking into his eyeline.

Kurt surprised him with a firm kiss and even more with his answer: “That’s completely the wrong word for what you are to me. But if we’re using conventional terms… Yeah.”

“Because you love me, and I love you,” Blaine murmured, leaning forward and whispering against his lips, “and we’re totally fucking screwed.”

“That about sums it up,” Kurt repeated in a dazed tone, and pulled Blaine in for another of those desperate kisses that had marked the passage of so many moments over the past two days. It was dizzying and disorienting, Kurt claiming his mouth in a way that felt to Blaine like he never wanted to stop, like he was taking as much as he could because he didn’t know if he’d still have it the next day, week, month, year.

Blaine was breathless when he pulled back, shivering as the AC kicked in, and asked, “So you’re sure there’s nothing else you want to do while we’re here?”

Kurt looked thoughtful for a moment, toying with the corner of his pillowcase, and said, “There was this art show last year at The Cosmopolitan that I wish I could have seen. I read an article about it.”

“Go on,” Blaine prompted him after a moment.

Kurt shifted, then, extricating his legs from Blaine’s and turning around to settle his back against Blaine’s chest. “Have you ever noticed that the longer you look up, the more stars you see?” he asked.

“We had this exact conversation in July at Coffin Pond,” Blaine reminded him, slipping one arm beneath his neck and the other around his waist. “What is it about this art show?”

“It was called _Confessions,”_ Kurt answered at length. “The artist set up little booths where people could anonymously write secrets on slips of paper, and then she would pin them up on the walls. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands.”

“Sounds pretty cool,” Blaine agreed, biding his time—Kurt wouldn’t have brought it up without a reason.

“What would you confess?” Kurt asked softly.

“That my life hasn’t been the same since they stopped making Double Dip Crunch,” he replied blithely, earning himself a sharp pinch to the thigh. He cleared his throat, and as looked out through the window and caught the first of the meteors darting across the night sky, he hooked his chin over Kurt’s shoulder and answered, “I realized that I was in love with my best friend while we were watching meteors together in Louisiana.”

He was expecting Kurt to tense in his arms, the same as he had done every other time Blaine had brought up his feelings; it felt almost too good to be true that, instead, he simply relaxed further into Blaine’s hold, hummed happily, and said, “That’s a good one.”

“What about you?”

“We might be here a while.”

“I’m listening,” he said.

“Okay, well…” Kurt trailed off, taking a deep breath as if to brace himself. With a small, self-deprecating laugh, he began, “I once walked in on my best friend jerking off and used it as masturbation fodder for a month.”

Prodding him in the ribs, Blaine said, “So I give you this deep confession and you respond with, ‘I used to jerk off to you.’”

“Okay, A) your first one was about _cereal,_ so don’t even. And B) you were fucking hot, so I’m not even a little bit sorry,” Kurt shot back.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Blaine said. “Tell me something real.”

“That’s my line,” Kurt joked. “But okay, um…”

Heavy moments of silence passed, punctuated only by the steady sound of their breathing and the occasional set of footsteps passing by outside the door. After a few moments, Blaine prompted, “It doesn’t have to be something monumental.”

“I just can’t think of anything that you don’t already know about me,” Kurt finally said, his voice quietly surprised. “You were there for so much of it. And I’ve told you about last year, so…

“Blaine, you—“ Kurt continued, stopping short to turn around and face him. His eyes were mostly shrouded in the darkness, but Blaine could feel the weight of them as if his gaze were something tangible. “You know me better than anyone—better than I know myself, sometimes—and I think what… What took me so long was that I was terrified of losing you but also terrified of not losing you, of what all this would mean if I let it in.”

“We were both scared,” Blaine said. “Do you really think I would have let you off the hook in Delaware if I hadn’t been?”

“I know, but… If you hadn’t noticed, I’m kind of obsessed with you,” Kurt said, the words stilted and almost clumsy, like he was trying to make sense of them as they were coming out. “And it… It made me feel so unsafe, because I don’t get like this with anyone else. I never thought I was the kind of person who pins their everything on somebody.”

“You don’t—“ Blaine began, but Kurt held a hand up to stop him.

“B, can you… Can you let me try and get this out?”

“Of course.”

Kurt took a deep breath, and continued, “Some of the things I’ve put you through on this trip, and you were so patient with me… Even the idea of getting to have this with you felt too good to be true, like everything would just go to shit if I let myself think it was a possibility, let alone have the reality. And I’m still kind of terrified, honestly, but it’s always going to be you. There’s never going to be anybody else. I’ve been so stupid, and so _blind,_ and I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”

Slowly, eyes fixed on Kurt’s the entire time, Blaine gathered up Kurt’s wrists and straddled his hips, pinning him to the bed. Kurt was miles of body and skin underneath him, skin that made Blaine suddenly wish they’d factored in a stop to hit the beach at Goleta when they got to the west coast. He would drag Kurt swimming and then find his old hideaway cove along the cliff wall where he could take his time licking the salt from Kurt’s freckles.

Instead, he entwined their fingers and leaned down with parted lips: close, close, closer, and he was consumed. The door between them was finally open, swinging on its hinges in the wake of a hurricane and Blaine could feel the devastation it had left behind from his scalp down to the soles of his feet. Their lips barely brushed, but Blaine's heart was _racing_ and there was a tugging in his stomach that felt like jolting awake to the sensation of falling. It was panic, pressure, realization. It was hitting the ground running; it was willingly tumbling headfirst into love in a way that he hadn’t yet known.

He kissed Kurt, and everything slowed. He could feel Kurt's eyelashes against the apple of his cheek, a fanfare in his heart and Kurt’s lips soft and pliant beneath his own. He poured every last shred of hope and fear and adoration and regret into Kurt, apologizing in kind for the wasted years, promising to be his and his alone until the end of forever. Their mouths fitted and then broke apart, finding each other again with eyes closed and fingertips cloying to tangle in hair and against skin. Blaine moaned brokenly and Kurt deepened the kiss, pulling him flush, mouth insistent and warm and wet and wanting. He needed nothing except this, except Kurt; he would forgo food and rest and oxygen if it meant he could just do this every moment for the rest of his life, because this was everything and so much more.

“I love you,” was his answer when he pulled back, his voice thick and his eyes more wet than he could stand.

“I love you, too,” Kurt breathed, eyes wide and dark as he blinked up at him. “And my confession is that I realized I was in love with my best friend in a coffee shop in Ohio. While he had a stirrer sticking out of his mouth.”

The unexpected, lighthearted addition to the end of Kurt’s confession washed over him and put him back together where he had briefly come apart—he laughed, and rolled off Kurt with no grace whatsoever, burying his face in the pillow as his body shook.

When he had caught his breath, he peeked at Kurt through one eye and found him looking back, tenderness crinkling at the corners of his eyes as he reached for Blaine’s hand. His expression was full of warmth, contentment, awe. “This is going to be awesome, right? It’s the start of something really, really great?”

Sobering for a second, Blaine realized where he’d heard the words before—he’d said them to Kurt over three months earlier, sitting out on Kurt’s deck and counting fireflies—and as Kurt curled his fingers into the space above Blaine’s thumb, he replied, “I think maybe we’re already in the middle of something really, really great. But if we’re using _conventional_ terms… Yeah.”

“So what happens next?” Kurt asked.

Drawing himself closer, just like Kurt did every night even if they’d fallen asleep with a gulf between them, he cupped Kurt’s jaw and slid his hand back, his thumb fitting into the groove behind his ear like it was a space made just for him, just to be doing this. “You just have to be with me,” he said. “We can figure the rest out later.”

And as Kurt met his kiss, smiling into it with complete abandon, Blaine could practically hear the strains of [_Music for a Found Harmonium_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/74882111234) picking up: they were only just getting started.

 

**Distance: 12,885 miles**


	10. Chapter 10

**Day 090: Saturday 15th December, 2012  
Turning Tides (California)**

_“Stop right there, mister.”_

_“Okay…”_

_“If you get your way in Vegas, I get mine in California. And I vote_ Fight Club.”

 

_“[Birds flying high, you know how I feel](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75382287424).”_

**April (7:54am)** – Just saw the news! Took you guys long enough ;)

“It’s been a long time coming, I know…”

_“Sun in the sky, you know how I feel.”_

**Marcie (9:12am)** – Never has one of those relationship status updates been a more welcome sight. Finally!

“Yes, Blaine and I are official.”

_“Breeze drifting on by, you know how I feel.”_

**Finn (11:33am)** – Congrats, little brother.

“I love him, and he loves me…”

_“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me…”_

**Dad (1:40pm)** – About time, boys. Be happy.

“And we’re happy.”

_“And I’m feeling—“_

 

“I don’t understand,” Kurt said as they drew closer to the neon-lit archway beckoning them onto Santa Monica Pier.

“What?”

“I don’t get it. Why isn’t it cold?”

“Sweetheart, this _is_ cold,” Blaine said, wrapping an arm around his waist and shooting him an easy smile.

“We come from _Brunswick,”_ Kurt said. “It’s _December._ This is _not_ cold.”

“Okay, you win,” Blaine said, chuckling and pulling him in closer, away from the crowds milling around the sidewalk, some leaving the pier and some headed down the same incline. After a moment, he asked, “Isn’t it kind of strange suddenly being around this many people all at once?”

“Sort of,” Kurt said, casting his eyes around the pier and half-attempting to separate the snowbirds and tourists from the locals.

“Does it feel good, though? Getting out of the R.V. for a few days?”

Kurt considered the question at length and took a deep, measured breath. _Yeah, freedom is mine, and you know how I feel…_

They were staying at Cooper’s ostentatious, palatial home on Georgina Avenue while he was in New York on business. While Kurt was happy about the simple prospect of staying still, it was the rest of it that left him almost ill at ease.

Wilfully falling into love with Blaine had, after choking down that jagged pill of fear, been about as easy as falling into bed with him. Aside from Kurt’s feelings finally being out in the open, nothing had really changed between them. Kurt still spent his days quietly awed of how far they had come, all the things they had done together, and what they were building. Blaine still peppered their days with affectionate glances, kisses that made Kurt’s breath hitch in his chest, and touches that were somehow both assured and tentative. They still drove, and flirted, and bantered, and moved with arcane knowledge around one another. Nothing was different, yet everything was.

They were happy, but still the ground moved beneath them. He felt over-saturated; filled up and wrung out over and over. He couldn’t settle inside the love until things were certain, until _what happens on the road trip stays on the road trip_ was a distant, laughable memory.

And the crux of the matter: they were doing all of it under the laser-focused gazes of everyone they knew.

“Well, I don’t intend on setting foot back inside until we have to,” he finally answered; leaving it all between the messy sheets and lived-in surroundings of the R.V. was a balm.

“Aw, sweetheart, you don’t like my digs? I’m _wounded,”_ Blaine declared, palm to his heart and a comical look of shock on his face.

Kurt smiled back weakly but didn’t hold Blaine’s gaze, focusing instead on the sea of faces and bodies around them as they turned into Pacific Park, lights flashing brightly under the dark sky and [music playing](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75382787875) from somewhere by the Ferris wheel.

“Hey,” Blaine murmured. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, I just…” Kurt trailed off, shaking his head before finally meeting Blaine’s eyes and saying, “We went public.”

“We did,” Blaine said cautiously. “Should we not have?”

Kurt paused, thinking back to the video diary he’d filmed that morning; an answer to all of the questions and messages he’d received in response to his cryptic, one-line text entry the previous night. Smiling as _Feeling Good_ played from the living area, Blaine oblivious while he did the dishes from their overindulgent breakfast in bed, Kurt had let it chase away the uncertainties niggling and churning in the back of his mind, every last _what if_ haunting him with a renewed ferocity that he fought off with everything he had.

“No, I’m glad we did,” he said. “It’s just… You saw the texts.”

“I did.”

 _“All_ of the texts. There were a _lot_ of texts. And April won’t stop poking me on Facebook. I mean, who even pokes on Facebook anymore?”

“It’s a lot of pressure,” Blaine said, looking for the first time like he was feeling it, too.

“Oh, thank _god,”_ he groaned, unable to suppress the urge to turn and kiss him; he barely even cared that they were surrounded by people. Blaine’s lips still tasted of the lemon sorbet they’d shared after dinner, feeding each other with sundae spoons at the bar in Cooper’s kitchen.

When he pulled away, Blaine asked, “Did you think you were the only one feeling it?”

“Yeah, actually.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Kurt trailed off, running his fingers over the front of the thick cable knit cardigan Blaine wore, the one he’d nabbed from Kurt’s side of the closet like it was nothing. “Do you understand why I fought against it all for so long?”

“Of course I do,” Blaine said. “I was scared, too.”

Kurt shook his head, eyebrows knitting together. “But you always seemed so sure…”

“Come on,” Blaine said quietly, taking his hand and pulling him over to an empty bench opposite the ticket booth. When Kurt sat down, his hand clasped between both of Blaine’s own, the wood was still warm from its last occupants. “I was sure of how I felt, that much is true. But sure of what _you’d_ do? Honestly, I’ve never been _less_ sure.”

“So how did you… In Wyoming, you just—“

“I was sick of biting my tongue every time I wanted to say it. I was still terrified of ruining us and what we had, but I couldn’t keep pretending. And that fucking _song…”_

“That fucking song,” Kurt echoed, shaking his head.

“What about you?” Blaine asked.

“I’ve never been so scared in all my life. Still am, a little bit.”

“Why?”

“It was always more than just—just putting us and our friendship in jeopardy. It was…” Kurt paused, averting his eyes and forcing himself to confront his instinct to run with his need to talk. “I was scared that you’d just leave again.”

Blaine’s grip on his hands tightened. “Kurt, I wouldn’t—“

“Because I honestly think that I’d lose it if you did,” he interrupted, words flowing irrepressibly now that he’d started. “It took me this long to _trust_ you again, Blaine, and now there’s all these people who want to know _everything_ and all I want to know is that… That I’ll still have something to tell them when we get home.”

A moment passed where Blaine did nothing more than stare at him, a muscle working in his jaw. “You’ve needed to say that to me for a while, haven’t you?” At Kurt’s sheepish nod, he shifted closer and said, “Kurt, I’m not… I’m not going home. Home’s been right in front of me for nearly seventeen years. It just took me a while to figure it out.”

Kurt shook his head in near disbelief, his breath leaving his body in a shaky release that had been building up ever since Blaine had returned from London. His eyes stung and he blinked rapidly, and even as he looked away, Blaine ducked into his eyeline.

“Sweetheart, I’m gonna fix this,” he said, his tone solemn. “I’ve got you, remember?”

And there it was: _I’ve got you._ Three more little words in addition to the three that had had Kurt tongue-tied for so long, three more little words that encapsulated how much Blaine had done for him.

“You do, don’t you?” he said, more a slightly awed statement than a question.

Blaine rolled his eyes and tucked two fingers beneath Kurt’s chin, gently guiding his gaze upward. Looking at him with an expression so painfully earnest and full of tenderness that Kurt thought he might unravel, he said, _“Always.”_

“I love you,” Kurt whispered on a punch of breath, pitching forward to wrap his arms around Blaine’s shoulders and pull him close. Blaine’s fingers had still been tucked beneath his chin and his arm was caught between them; his laugh was muffled against Kurt’s shoulder until they broke apart.

“I love you, too,” Blaine said, reaching down for Kurt’s hand and linking their fingers. “Now, come on. We’ve got a first date to finish.”

Kurt wanted to roll his eyes and poke fun at the idea that this was a first date as they got in line for tickets, but as he considered the notion, he realized that it was exactly how they had spent their day—albeit a little closer than most first dates, given that they’d made out in the back of Cooper’s home movie theater for most of _Fight Club._

Nevertheless, after they’d bought enough tickets to get them on each ride at least once, he said, “I’m not sure this qualifies as a first date.”

“Dinner and a movie; it totally qualifies,” Blaine replied, swinging their joined hands between them as they set off toward the Ferris wheel.

“Ah, but we did it backwards,” Kurt said.

“What _haven’t_ we done backwards?” Blaine pointed out, and Kurt smiled despite himself. “You know, I never realize how much I miss California until I come back.”

“You finally got me here.”

“And I can finally go on the Ferris wheel.”

“You—what?” Kurt asked, perplexed. “You’ve visited Coop about a million times and you’ve never been here?”

“Of course I have,” Blaine said. “But I was saving the Ferris wheel for you.”

OneRepublic’s [_Secrets_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75383092785) was playing as they joined the back of the short line beneath the giant wheel and Kurt smiled to himself, thinking back to all the years they’d spent going to the annual bazaar at St John’s in Brunswick. They would hold hands until they got to the top of the wheel, where they would each tell a secret. At twelve, it had been, “I ate the last cupcake, the one you were saving.” At fifteen, it had been, “I kinda have a crush on Drake.” At twenty-one, Kurt had said, “I missed you,” instead of, “Holding your hand feels strange and different and I can’t figure out why.”

Once they were seated and the guardrail was settled across their laps, Kurt shifted close to Blaine and was reaching for his hand when Blaine’s cell rang, blaring at top volume.

“I thought I’d set it to vibrate,” Blaine said apologetically as he pulled it out. His brow furrowed as he looked at the screen. “It’s Coop. Do you mind if I…”

Kurt waved him off with a smile, turning his attention to the views out over the bay as they rose into the air, hundreds of lights sparkling over the water. He rested his head on Blaine’s shoulder and sighed contentedly, tuning out everything save for his newfound sense of peace. It all seemed to be falling into place— _finally, finally, finally—_ and that torn seam of their fabric was already re-sewn, the stitches doubled and trebled by the last three months; not mended by a long goodbye but by a belated hello.

“Yes, Coop, we got the video message. I still don’t get why you can’t just _text_ me like a normal person…”

He felt Blaine’s fingers threading through his own as they inched higher, and considered what he would say when they got to the top. He’d already given away all of his secrets—aside from his cornbread recipe, of course; that would go with him to the grave. Maybe, if Blaine hadn’t come clean in Wyoming and Kurt hadn’t done the same in Arizona, they would have had matching confessions at the top. Maybe, if Blaine had never gone to London and nothing had changed between them, Kurt would be confessing that he was the one moving around the magnets on the fridge and Leona was not, in fact, haunted. Maybe, if their almost-kiss hadn’t been interrupted and they’d both been brave much sooner, Kurt’s secret would be that he was happy about marriage equality in Maine for more than one reason.

“No, that’s—that’s amazing, Coop! Okay, I’ll… Yeah. Yeah, I’ll talk to Kurt and let you know.”

At the sound of his name, Kurt sat upright in his seat. He looked at Blaine, neon colors playing across his face as he offered Kurt a tight smile and hung up.

“What’s your secret?” he asked, squeezing Kurt’s hand.

“I don’t have any left.”

“Looks like we need a new tradition, then.”

“What did Coop say?” Kurt prompted after a moment of silence had passed, Blaine glancing down at the park from their vantage point at the top of the wheel.

“That movie he’s just optioned, it…” Blaine trailed off, pulling his hand from Kurt’s and scratching at the back of his neck. “He wants us both to come out here to work on it. First assistant director and director of photography.”

“I—what?” Kurt spluttered. “But we _just_ graduated.”

“I guess when he said fresh talent, he meant the crew as well as the cast.”

 _This is it,_ Kurt thought immediately, his mind suddenly awash in a new kind of hope. He needed a plan, something concrete that didn't ebb and flow like the neverending stream of white lines disappearing beneath the R.V. He needed the certainty, to know that there was something more for them after they returned to Maine on the same itchy feet with which they’d left. _This is what we’ve been waiting for._

He looked over at Blaine with wide eyes, reaching for his hand and finding a loose fist into which he burrowed his fingers, needing a grounding touch to keep from letting the heady drama of Cooper’s announcement get to him.

“But you’re going to New York,” Kurt said quietly, stomach dropping in a way that had nothing to do with the Ferris wheel’s soft lurch downward. “I mean… Would you think about it?”

“Do _you_ want to do it?”

 _No more secrets._ “Yes.”

“What if…” Blaine shifted uncomfortably in his seat for a moment. “What if I told that I don’t know which one I want more?”

“I’d say that’s okay.”

“What if I told you that I’m scared I’ll fail, whichever one I pick?”

“I’d say that’s okay, too. We can’t stop each other from failing, but we can pick each other up when we do. You’ve got me, and I’ve got you, right?”

Blaine smiled at that. “I think I want to, but… It’s big. Can you give me some time?”

“Of course, silly,” Kurt said, leaning over and pressing his forehead to Blaine’s temple. For longer than he cared to remember, he had been picking the lock of his own joy, slowly feeling for the tumblers and gradually letting them click into place. Blaine was the only man who had ever _given_ him joy without that oft-expected bite of sorrow—he could have all the time he wanted.

They were quiet for a while after that, Blaine obviously deep in thought about the choice before him. They didn’t speak again until after Kurt had ducked out of the line for the West Coaster, leaving Blaine holding their tickets with a puzzled expression, to examine a rack of key chains more closely. He selected one carefully, not even caring about the inflated price as he paid, and took it back to Blaine, pressing it into his palm.

Blaine examined it closely, eyes trained on the heavy pewter outline of the United States, one heart punched into New York and the other into California, a dotted line connecting them.

“Whatever you decide,” Kurt said simply.

He yelped as Blaine wrapped an arm around his waist and dipped him, crushing their lips together in a kiss that Kurt felt in his toes.

“I love you so much,” he whispered, and as Blaine straightened, pulled them back upright and silently stepped away with a small smile, all Kurt could dazedly think was, _I am Jack's heart, grown three sizes bigger._

 

**Distance: 13,157 miles**

*

**Day 095: Thursday 20th December, 2012  
Freefall (Oregon)**

_“It was filmed in so many places I feel like we_ have _to watch it.”_

_“It does keep coming up, doesn’t it?”_

_“Alright. Oregon:_ Into The Wild.”

 

“Seriously, whose idea was it to do this in a hundred days?” Blaine grumbled to his reflection as he struggled with his bow tie—he could usually tie them in his sleep, but all of his attempts so far had been in vain.

“Let me,” Kurt said, moving in front of him and batting his hands away. He was already impeccably dressed, his skinny black tie knotted just so at his throat and his hair swept artfully up and away from his face. He quickly set to work, his long fingers deftly undoing Blaine’s crooked effort. “You don’t usually get worked up like this. We haven’t even gone past ‘fashionably late’ yet.”

“You can’t get an R.V. from Crater Lake to Portland in four hours,” Blaine muttered, fists flexing at his sides. “We should have left earlier; fuck what ‘Kathy Bates’ had to say.”

“But I’ll bet that’s not why you’re nervous,” Kurt said lightly, pulling one end of the simple tie over the other and forming the beginnings of the bow. “So what’s up?”

“Why did he have to make me the guest of honor? I barely even did anything.”

“You gave him the idea.”

“What if he wants me to make a speech?”

“Blaine, come on. It’s just _Artie.”_

“I know, but… I’ve never been guest of honor at anything before,” Blaine said. “And the wedding doesn’t count; you were right next to me.”

“And I’ll be right next to you for this,” Kurt replied smoothly, and pulled the knot taut. Stepping back, he turned to look at Blaine’s reflection in the mirror and nudged his shoulder. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course.”

“I’m nervous, too. I’ve never been the _arm candy_ before.”

Rolling his eyes, Blaine said, “It’s not some big red carpet thing.”

“Exactly,” Kurt said, quiet but triumphant, and Blaine smiled despite the butterflies in his stomach.

In truth, Blaine was nervous not just because they were about to attend the first and only public screening of Artie’s documentary—the idea for which Blaine had given him in a series of emails back around spring break—but also because Artie had always taken on the role of big brother with Blaine, and had the uncanny ability to known when he was agonizing over a decision yet to be made. The decision he now faced between New York and Los Angeles was consuming almost every waking moment as he weighed the pros and cons, envisioned possible futures, and tried not to think about what would happen if he decided on New York. When he’d told Kurt back in Vegas that they’d figure out the rest later, he hadn’t exactly counted on the rest showing up to knock on a moving door.

“Come on,” Kurt murmured, taking his hand and squeezing it reassuringly. “We’re about to be very _un_ fashionably late.”

After casting one final glance at himself in the mirror—with no dress code, they’d decided to simply go all out and wear the same suits they’d worn to Toby and Andrew’s wedding—Blaine nodded silently and let Kurt lead him out of the R.V.

It was a chilly evening, and the breeze made Blaine grateful for the parking spot they’d been able to claim right outside the Alberta Rose Theatre. The small sign above and to the left of the door read, _DECEMBER SHOWS: 20th – KIDS THAT I ONCE KNEW,_ and for a moment, a swell of pride quelled Blaine’s nerves.

If Blaine had had the time to pause and really take stock of the sight before him, he might have thought it odd that there was no pang of jealousy giving a rough edge to the happiness he felt for his friend. But as it stood, all he knew was Kurt tugging him inside the theater and whispering, “I love you, I love you,” before all but pushing him through a set of double doors bearing a poster for Artie’s film.

The lights were low inside the small theater, two clusters of hanging white globes providing the only illumination save for the single spotlight trained on Artie, seated in his wheelchair at center-stage. As Blaine gazed at the rows of seats stretching away from them in a gradual incline, he saw that the theater was packed to capacity, and pride twisted in his chest.

“Speak of the devil, yo!” Artie’s voice rang out around the small theater—packed to capacity, Blaine saw as he gazed around. “Ladies and gentlemen, Blaine Anderson!”

There was applause, and Blaine’s face grew hot as an usher appeared at his side and directed him and Kurt down to the only two open seats remaining, right in the front row. At the sudden attention, he had a wild urge to laugh or give a thumbs-up or do a dance—the only thing that kept him in check was Kurt’s grip on his elbow.

Once they were seated and the applause had died down, Artie continued, “Now that we’re all here, I’d like to officially introduce _Kids That I Once Knew,_ and thank everyone who played a part in getting us here at the Alberta Rose.

“As I was saying before, the idea for this film can be traced back to this guy right here,” he said, pointing at Blaine with a smile. “We were emailing over spring break this year, commiserating about how hard it was going to be to find work after graduation, and he said, ‘At least we know what we wanna do. How many people do _you_ know that have no idea? Because I know a lot.’ So, Blaine, without you I’d probably be up here introducing another Star Wars-themed Christmas special.”

The audience laughed, a few people cat-calling from the back, and Blaine grinned up at his friend, nerves dissipating in the wake of Artie’s easy, self-deprecating humor. Blaine had missed him.

“Well, now that I’ve test-driven my Oscar acceptance speech,” Artie continued, pausing for more laughter, “Thank you all for coming; enjoy the karaoke afterward, and I present to you all a labor of blood, sweat, tears, and love: _Kids That I Once Knew.”_

With that, Artie nodded to the back of the theater and wheeled himself to the side of the stage, out of the way of the giant projector screen that had been erected. The lights dimmed, and the film began.

Artie had scored the opening with a soft, haunting piano piece that had a false brightness to it, and it flowed perfectly beneath slow motion B-roll shots of students studying in libraries, sitting in lectures, and walking around campus laden with textbooks. The introduction was short, as was Artie’s style; he hadn’t wasted any time grandstanding, simply provided enough to get his sparse opening credits out of the way.

“Do you know what you’re doing after college?” Artie asked on screen, holding out a small mic to a girl holding a thick stack of books that looked like they weighed more than she did.

“Um, I don’t—I don’t really know… I’m majoring in art history,” she offered, the camera zooming in for a close-up of her troubled expression.

That was the way in which the first series of clips progressed—Artie asking students about their plans after college, and the majority unable to give a firm answer. He’d even spoken to one of the college professors, who told him, “So many kids go to college not knowing what they want to do, and even those who do figure it out while they’re here… I see too many of them graduating and ending up at Starbucks. We’re not preparing them, giving them the tools they need to get jobs that they want. The system is broken.”

Blaine grew increasingly uncomfortable as the documentary wore on, Artie revisiting a few of the same students at the beginning of the summer and then again in the fall to see how they were faring out in the ‘real world.’

“We all think that we’re gonna do better than our parents did, you know?” one guy said as Artie interviewed him in a café. He was wearing a Best Buy uniform, and had earlier been shown graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business. “We tell ourselves that we’re not gonna repeat the same mistakes and wind up in dead-end jobs going nowhere. But when you’re left with so little direction and so few opportunities are out there, what can you do except try to survive and hope that ‘better’ is somewhere around the corner?”

Blaine paused at that, his attention faltering, because right there was the heart of his dilemma: what he thought he _should_ do versus what he _wanted_ to do. They were tangled around one another in such a mess that he could no longer find the end of either thread. What he thought he _should_ do—move to L.A. and work on the movie—meant getting most of what he wanted: a place to be with Kurt; his lifelong passion kick-started into a career; a shitty first apartment and a Saturday trip to IKEA to spend too much money on a couch and bedroom set. But what he wanted was the music, for it to flow out of him in a constant way, rather than in the pockets of down time he got between turns at driving. Kurt had ignited his inspiration in Vegas and had been unwittingly feeding it ever since, unleashing a song that Blaine hadn’t known he’d been waiting to write. Universes existed in _his_ head, too, and he wanted the time to explore them until he knew them inside out.

Forced, however, with so many students who had graduated only to be let down by the real world, or who were left with degrees they were unable to use, Blaine felt selfish for even considering it.

The documentary was just under an hour but it was as if Blaine had merely blinked and it was coming to an end, snatches of dialogue from jaded and disillusioned ex-students playing over the song from which Artie had taken the documentary’s title: [_Dead Hearts_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75383475202) by Stars.

 _“They were kids that I once knew; now they’re all dead hearts to you,”_ the singers lamented, the final shot a closing door that faded to black, ready for the credits to roll.

As the lights came back up, Blaine swallowed around the lump in his throat and joined in the applause, rising to his feet along with Kurt and those around them. He didn’t want to become a ‘dead heart;’ didn’t want to lay to waste all he’d been working for his entire life on a maybe; didn’t want to diminish into the perpetual cycle of work, sleep, work, sleep to support a dream that perhaps he’d realize but more than likely would be put on the backburner.

Kurt’s eyes were shining with warmth and love as he turned to Blaine and hugged him fiercely. Blaine slowly raised his arms to hug him back, pulling him close and breathing him in, and was struck with a sudden clarity, the threads untangling with no more than a simple embrace and the memory of flickering firelight. He still wanted to create beautiful things with Kurt, and though he wanted the music, who was to say that he couldn’t do both? For so long he’d been convincing himself that all of this was transitory, their journey compounding his thoughts into days and miles and drive time rather than the lifetime at his feet.

“Artie!” Kurt exclaimed, cutting through Blaine’s thoughts and bending down to hug Artie as he approached. “You’ve definitely come a long way since Star Wars-themed Christmas specials.”

“Well, we thought about featuring some aspiring Jedi, but they’ve always got Comic Con,” Artie joked, and looked up at Blaine. “What’d you think, little bro?”

“It was incredible, Artie. Really,” Blaine said, holding Artie’s damnably inquisitive gaze. “Honestly, I’d never have thought something like that could come out of an email whining about college.”

“All you, my man,” Artie said. Smiling slyly up at them with one eyebrow raised, he added, “And I hear congratulations are in order.”

“We know, it was a long time coming,” Kurt said. “When were you betting on it happening?”

“Actually, I was the last hold-out,” Artie said. “I figured you’d be at least twenty-five before one of you cracked. You really had your heads buried.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, man,” Blaine said with a laugh, and punched his shoulder for good measure.

“I call ‘em like I see ‘em,” Artie said, holding up his hands before taking a long look at Blaine—too long, and way too inquisitive for his liking. “Since we’re on the subject, what do you have planned for after the road trip?”

“Old habits die hard,” Blaine said, stalling for time. He only hesitated for a moment, but it was enough; he could see the shift in Artie’s expression, the drawing back of his shoulders that only ever meant he was getting ready to hand out life advice. Though the decision was new and he’d barely had time to try it on for size, Blaine announced, “Coop’s asked Kurt and I to come out to L.A. and work on a movie his company’s producing, so we’re set.”

From the corner of his eye he saw Kurt’s posture become ramrod straight, and when Blaine looked at him, a smile was spreading across his face like rays of sunlight breaking through clouds.

“That’s great, man,” Artie said, surprise evident in his tone. “God, that’s fantastic. I don’t know many others who fell almost straight into a job, especially film students.”

“I’d be stupid not to take it,” Blaine said, “and L.A. is great, so why not?”

“Sounds like you’re both following your hearts,” Artie said.

Snaking his arm around Kurt’s waist, Blaine answered simply, “We are.”

“I’m really happy for you. You deserve it,” Artie told them sincerely, his eyes sliding past Blaine as someone called his name from the other side of the theater. “Come on. There’s a few people I want you to meet.”

Over the course of the next hour, Artie introduced them to more people than Blaine could keep track of, including a group of five girls engaged in a heated debate over which versions of the _Lord of the Rings_ movies were better: the theatrical or the extended. Unable to help getting sucked in when he heard one of the girls saying, “The theatrical versions are better because they’re _shorter,”_ he lost Kurt to the crowd, but looked for him every so often. He noticed that Kurt was standing straighter, smiling more easily, gesturing more freely while he spoke to people whose names Blaine had already forgotten—he looked happy.

Eventually, when most of the girls had agreed to disagree and two had been whisked away by significant others, Blaine caught Kurt’s eye from across the theater. He was sitting near the back, jacket removed, sleeves rolled up, and tie loosened. He was looking right at Blaine, smiling softly as his fingers circled around and around the rim of his glass. Blaine climbed the shallow incline without a second thought, gravitating toward Kurt like he was being physically reeled in.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, coming to rest against the back of the seat in front of Kurt’s.

“All of us in the A.V. club were pushing so hard to get out of Maine, and look at us now. You, me, Artie,” Kurt said, and took a sip of his drink, flicking his eyes toward the guy up on stage, half-drunk and murdering _Moves Like Jagger._ “We made it.”

“Well, Artie was always going to make it. He was gone before the ink on his diploma was dry,” Blaine said.

“He had something to prove,” Kurt said quietly. “Everyone was telling him his wheelchair would always hold him back.”

Blaine nodded, glancing back to the front row; Artie was surrounded by a group of guys and girls, a cute blonde sitting in his lap and idly running her fingers through his hair.

“If New York is where you want to be, I’ll go with you,” Kurt blurted, catching Blaine off-guard like he always did.

He turned to look at Kurt in disbelief. “What did you just say?”

Kurt sat up straighter in his seat, set his drink on the floor, and cleared his throat. “I said that I’ll go with you to New York. If you’ll have me.”

Blaine blinked and crossed his arms over his chest. “Kurt, of _course_ I would, but… I want to work on this movie, and I want to be with you, wherever you are.”

“I don’t want you to do this for _me,_ though. I want it to be what’s right for you,” Kurt said, wrapping his fingers around Blaine’s arm.

 _“You’re_ what’s right for me. And you’re… You’re _one_ reason. Just not the whole reason,” Blaine said. “I’m doing this for me; I feel like… L.A. is where I’m supposed to be right now. And I meant what I said to Artie; I’d be stupid to turn down an opportunity like that. First A.D. on my first time out? Come on, Kurt. Even if it turns out to be a movie about killer tomatoes from outer space, that’s a dream gig.”

“Oh god, I hope it’s not killer tomatoes,” Kurt said, scrunching his nose before shaking his head and asking, “You’re _really_ sure?”

“What, you need me to convince you? Should I sing you that love song, now?”

“Only if you let me sing it with you. We’re a team, aren’t we?”

Kurt looked as if he was expecting Blaine to roll his eyes and tell him of course they were, they always had been and always would be. Instead, Blaine bent down, wrapped his fingers around Kurt’s tie, and pulled him up for a crushing kiss. His lips tingled with the taste of Tequila Sunrise that lingered on Kurt’s tongue and at the corners of his mouth.

“Let’s do it, then,” Kurt said breathlessly, gazing up at him with a playful smirk.

“You wouldn’t rather… Get out of here?”

“And pass up the opportunity to serenade each other? It’s like you’re a different person. Are you feeling okay?”

Blaine intercepted Kurt’s hand on its way to his forehead, threading their fingers together and gesturing toward the stage. “After you, good sir.”

It was a heady feeling, being able to take a step back and see exactly how moments like this would play out on a big screen—which angles would be used to capture the happiness in Kurt’s eyes; exactly which second the lights would catch in the spokes of Artie’s wheelchair, drawing Blaine’s attention so that he caught Artie’s wink; the knowing little glances he and Kurt would exchange as they sang to each other up on the stage. [Their song sheet](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75383825786) was one that spoke of a new level of love and commitment, of seeing changes in one another that finally cemented what they should have been long ago, and of a relationship that was no longer a fleeting or finite thing. They were in it, now, and as he sang the words, _“But I’d be yours if you’d be mine,”_ Blaine wanted to laugh at how scared they’d both been. If he’d known this was waiting for them, he’d have taken Kurt to Dairy Frost when they were fourteen, blushing as he tentatively reached for Kurt’s hand over the weathered and worn Formica. He would have slow-danced unironically with him at prom to _I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing_ instead of quietly judging everyone else while nursing a cup of the cliché spiked punch. He wouldn’t be living with the regrets of so much time wasted and so many missed opportunities.

 _But then,_ he thought, watching Kurt alight as his voice soared over his verse, _doesn’t it just make all this taste that much sweeter? Doesn’t it mean that we’ve earned it?_

By the end of the song, Kurt had an arm wrapped tightly around Blaine’s waist, and they looked steadily at each other while moving up a key and singing, _“So love the one you hold, and I’ll be your gold, to have and to hold—a lover of the light.”_

No more nerves, no more fear, and no more heartache—all of that was over. Kurt pressed his lips to the corner of Blaine’s mouth and, standing on the stage of an old theater in Portland, Blaine came home.

 

**Distance: 14,206 miles**

*

**Day 097: Saturday 22nd December, 2012  
One for the Road (Washington)**

_“So is it really possible to just be ‘whelmed’ in Europe?”_

_“What are you talking about?”_

_“…Honestly, Blaine. Anyone who doesn’t get_ 10 Things I Hate About You _references deserves to be paddled. And not in the fun way.”_

 

“B, I’m pretty sure I won’t lose my mind in the few hours you’re forcing us to spend apart so that you can go hang out with my ex-boyfriend,” Kurt deadpanned, holding up the pair of the rubber gloves he was about to don and adding, “That is, unless you _want_ to stay and help clean up. I still maintain that you cheated.”

“You can’t cheat at beer pong,” Blaine said.

Kurt snorted derisively. “Getting naked wasn’t exactly part of the game.”

“It got warm,” Blaine said innocently. “You were welcome to remove clothing as well.”

“Still. Tipping the water bottle over yourself was a little much. This isn’t _Flashdance.”_

“Well, you were winning. You know what that does to me.”

“Ha! So you’re admitting it!” Kurt crowed triumphantly, and Blaine at least had the decency to _look_ shamefaced.

“It’s not like _you’re_ totally innocent,” he said, moving closer and backing Kurt against the kitchen counter.

“Don’t know what you mean,” Kurt said, squarely meeting Blaine’s gaze, chin up and finger raised. “Choose your next words _very_ carefully. Remember, I’m the one cleaning up this thing so we can have her tidy for the drive home.”

“Excited?” Blaine asked, leaning into him and setting his arms atop Kurt’s shoulders.

Kurt considered the question for a moment. “Ready, I think. It’s been… A little insane, to say the least. I think I’m just ready to start everything. With you.”

“See, now you’re making me want to stay and take you back to bed,” Blaine said.

“Always an option,” Kurt agreed wistfully, fingers dancing along Blaine’s hip. “But no. Go have fun with Brad the Great Deflowerer.”

Blaine tipped his head back and laughed, the sound filling the kitchen. “And you’re _sure_ it’s not weird?”

Though it shouldn’t have been, considering that Blaine had been friends with Brad even after he and Kurt broke up, it was a little weird.

Kurt had thought of Brad Jefferson as a stereotypical jock right up until senior year, when he’d surprised the hell out of Kurt and everyone else by joining Brunswick High’s Gay-Straight Alliance and coming out shortly thereafter. On more than one occasion, Kurt had turned to say something to Blaine during a meeting and found a pair of pale gray eyes watching him from beneath stray strands of ash blond hair, shy half-smiles tinged with a faint blush when Brad looked away.

It had gone that way until one Saturday in December. Kurt had been standing by his mailbox at an ungodly hour for a weekend, cradling a mug of coffee in his freezing hands and still blinking sleep from his eyes while he waited to see if his early admissions letter would arrive. Brad lived on Kurt’s street and, despite the early hour, Kurt didn’t think anything of it when he saw Brad driving by—he’d heard plenty of the guys on the football team bemoaning extra weekend practices, after all. But Brad had come back ten minutes later, pulling into the driveway behind Burt’s truck and looking like he was dreading whatever was about to happen. Kurt watched him curiously as he got out of the car holding a rose wrapped in plastic, his shirt buttoned all the way up and, from the looks of it, hastily pressed.

“Hi,” he’d said after a moment of awkward silence had passed between them. “I, um. I saw you out here and I thought—um. Well, I—I’ve seen you at the GSA meetings and I thought maybe we could… This is for you.”

Kurt accepted the rose, and Brad almost jumped out of his skin when their fingers brushed. “Thank you,” he’d said, smelling the rose and meeting Brad’s eyes. “I’ve never gotten a rose before.”

“Do you wanna go out some time?” Brad had asked—in the exact same moment that Kurt’s eyes began to water and he started sneezing.

As it happened, ‘some time’ turned out to be right then, a profusely apologetic Brad following Burt’s truck as Kurt was taken to the hospital to be treated for a severe allergic reaction. Burt had been highly amused by the whole thing, telling all the nurses that the red-faced teenager trailing them was his son’s date. Kurt didn’t quite recover from the embarrassment until the following Friday at dinner with Brad, texting Blaine under the table halfway through the starter to call off their pre-planned bailout.

Brad was sweet, cute, and funny in an off-beat, slightly awkward way. He was the first boy to make Kurt’s heart race and follow through, kissing him goodnight on his doorstep with the porch light flickering overhead. They’d explored everything together, and amicably parted ways when Brad got accepted to the University of Washington and it was clear that love wasn’t on the cards.

So, yeah, a little weird—but Kurt just nodded and said, “I’m sure. Now go, I have things to do.”

“Okay,” Blaine said, grinning and pressing a quick kiss to Kurt’s mouth before casually tossing over his shoulder, “Love you!”

“Love you, too!” Kurt called after him, and once the door to the R.V. had closed with a soft click and he had watched Blaine walk away, his curls cast golden under the yellow lights of the campground, Kurt closed all of the blinds against the night outside the windows and got to work.

 

It was a few hours before Kurt finally took a break, and if he’d known there would be so much to do, he might not have bet their match on it. Both of them had gotten into pretty good habits their first year at Bowdoin when they’d roomed together in the dorms, but by the time he’d finished getting all of the water marks off the shower door, he was sweating and cursing Blaine for distracting him into losing. His only saving grace throughout cleaning the kitchen and tidying the living area was his music—a playlist of songs that wrapped him up in memories from their journey so far: Blaine at The Cannery, singing _Break Me Out_ and cementing Kurt’s conviction that, yes, he would go on the road trip; equalizers and flashing lights, _Victim_ pumping out of the speakers behind him and driving him toward Blaine; _Anything Could Happen,_ the first song F had ever sent him, scoring a kiss that felt like coming home after the longest day Kurt had ever lived.

He collapsed onto the couch, pulling off his gloves and setting them aside in favor of Blaine’s laptop, wanting to see if he could finally beat the level of Candy Crush he’d been stuck on for the past week and a half. But when he opened the lid, his stomach lurched and his heart stopped—open on the screen was his blog.

“Fuck,” he whispered, mind in overdrive. There was so much on there that he wasn’t ready for Blaine to see, that he didn’t even know if he _wanted_ Blaine to see. “Shit, shit, fuck.”

Upon closer inspection, however, he realized that it wasn’t his blog at all—there were no video diaries, only text entries and pictures. He was halfway through scanning the most recent entry before he realized to whom the blog actually belonged.

 _I’m going to miss the road, and all the incredible things Kurt and I have seen together,_ Kurt read, eyes wide, _and I might have finally figured out that music and composing are what I want the most, but going to L.A. is the right thing to do—for both of us._

Kurt slammed the laptop closed with far more force than necessary and shot to his feet. His hands flexed uselessly at his sides as he paced around the living room, thoughts racing. He was still uneasy at the idea of Blaine giving up a chance to join the band and make the music he wanted to. Why did he have to see that blog entry _now?_ He turned back toward the laptop, worrying his lip as he considered.

 _Since when does Blaine have a blog?_ he wondered briefly, before coming to the conclusion that these private spaces were probably a mutually exclusive secret, kept since before the beginning of the trip.

“So much for no more secrets,” he muttered to himself, his mind wandering back to Santa Monica Pier. At the time it hadn’t even occurred to him to tell Blaine about it, what with so many more important things to say, but now he wondered why Blaine hadn’t told him.

He needed to know more, he needed to know _everything;_ as if unable to help it, Kurt sat back down, opened the laptop, and started poring over the entries. The more recent ones were happy, and filled with Blaine’s lighthearted humor; they had Kurt smiling, tension draining from his limbs as he settled back into the couch. He noted with no small measure of surprise that F had been sending songs to Blaine as well, and Kurt wondered if he’d heard these songs but been told lies about where they came from, just as he had lied to Blaine.

All too soon he was on edge again; reading their story not only in reverse, but also through Blaine’s eyes, was odd and discomfiting, as if he were watching houses being unbuilt, deconstructed into their component parts right before his eyes. The further back Kurt read, the more Blaine talked about movies—it wasn’t who he was anymore; somewhere along the way, he’d truly found himself.

He got as far back as Florida and stopped, his heart sinking heavily into his stomach.

 _What happens now?_ he thought. _Do I come clean and tell him everything? Get him to sit down and talk to me about it properly instead of announcing it like he needs it to be some big gesture?_

The territory was uncharted, and yet again Kurt found himself standing on shaky ground, wondering if he needed to start cupping his hands beneath Blaine’s once more, just in case.

Kurt fought off the familiar world-weariness threatening to settle over him and resolved to talk to Blaine about it whenever he returned—he could easily distract himself with tidying the bedroom and packing for their flight to Anchorage the next day. Ear buds firmly in place, he set about putting things away and pulling out the warmest things he owned, setting them down by his open suitcase. Within a matter of minutes he was humming again, his troubles put away to be addressed later.

He smiled when he found one of Blaine’s pens in the pocket of his own jacket—he must have left it in there one of the times he’d borrowed it. The image of Blaine wrapped up in his jacket finally let him shake off his lingering unease… Until he opened the drawer of Blaine’s bedside cabinet to put the pen away.

Inside the drawer were dozens of scraps of paper [covered in words and musical notes](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75384009644). Some of them only contained a line or two; others held entire verses. With shaking hands, Kurt sat down heavily and began laying them out. Certain phrases here and there jumped out at him: _And I have given less than you deserve; wait up, I’m coming home; my love will clothe your bones._ Kurt swallowed thickly, his eyes stinging as Blaine’s lyrics ricocheted around his mind. This was Blaine, the poetry of him finally in motion and on track to what he was so clearly meant to do—Kurt saw that, now, and he was about to keep Blaine from it. If Cooper hadn’t offered the movie to them, they would without question have gone to New York, where Blaine would have gotten a jump start. Instead Blaine was following Kurt to California and accepting a job that wasn’t his dream, wasn’t what he was meant to do.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Kurt took a few deep breaths and swallowed convulsively, fighting down the acrid taste of bile rising in his throat. He cast his eyes around the room, and suddenly it was like he was back home, running his hands along the uneven mantle over the fireplace. One last look. One for the road.

 _It shouldn’t be this way. I can’t take this away from him,_ Kurt thought. He ran his fingers over the scraps of paper and traced circles around the line, _I have given less than you deserve._

“But what have I given you?” he murmured, eyes fixed on that one line. How could Blaine ever think it was true? On the contrary, Blaine had given him too much… And Kurt had given nothing. He took a deep breath, buried his face in his hands, and considered. It felt too big, pressing in on him from all sides and leaching air from the room. He wondered again just when everything had gotten so important, so full of weight and responsibility.

He sat up, and his eyes landed on his suitcase. He reached out, picking through the contents just to give his hands something to do, and the thought occurred to him, _This is what I can give you._

It was with an eerie sense of calm that Kurt retrieved his flight ticket from the folder in the glove compartment, called a cab to the airport, and scribbled out a note: _You deserve the chance to live your dream, and you’ll miss out on it if you follow me to California. Please don’t do that, Blaine. Not for me. I love you, and I’m sorry._ He read it over and over again, looking between it and the scraps of paper littered across the bed, sheets pulled tight as if he and Blaine had never been there in the first place. Maybe that would have been best, if this was how it had to end… And hadn’t that always been the doubt chip-chip-chipping away at his resolve? That this would end, that they couldn’t possibly see it through without wrecking each other?

The cab arrived just as Kurt was looking at SeaTac live departures on the laptop, checking to see if there were any flights back to Maine. The earliest wasn’t until mid-afternoon, and now that he’d made his decision he needed to be gone as soon as possible, so instead he brought up the details of an earlier flight to Anchorage—April and the band were heading straight back to Brunswick on Christmas Day, after all, so perhaps he could hitch a ride with them.

Standing at the door to the R.V. with his suitcase in hand, Kurt took a long last look, whispered, “Goodbye,” and left.

He was calm for the entire journey to the airport, even when he realized that he’d left flight details open on the laptop and Blaine’s song fragments strewn across the bed. He was calm all the way through the process of rebooking his flight and paying the transfer fee, even when his credit card was declined and he had to pay with most of the cash he had on him. He was calm for the ten minutes he waited to board with the other sleepy-eyed passengers on his 3:30am flight, even when April responded to his text by calling him and yelling at him until he simply told her, “My flight gets in at six, so we’ll talk about it then.”

It wasn’t until he’d handed over his boarding pass and turned toward the concourse that it all caught up with him—he hadn’t been calm; he’d been _numb—_ and all it took was one word.

“Kurt!”

He wheeled around at the pained, confused dropping of his name across the gate lounge, and of course it was Blaine. The expression on his face was pure frustrated torture— _I can’t do this to you anymore—_ and it felt like one of those awful, clichéd movie moments, the ones where the music had been building to a crescendo and suddenly just died into silence the moment the two leads saw one another again. Like everything could be solved inside the quiet simplicity of eyes meeting across a crowded space.

[The music in Kurt’s left ear](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75646817465), however, didn’t die. It peaked in a shatter of glass and the words, _It feels like I am just too close to love you,_ laid down over a pounding dub-step bass—not his usual fare, but nonetheless apropos. Eyes filling with unexpected and unwelcome tears, he found himself shaking his head. Imperceptibly to begin with, but harder until the hope in Blaine’s eyes darkened into something that made Kurt’s gut heat up into a molten lead and solidify into a knot so heavy, it felt like settings roots down into the worn carpet of Gate 14.

He ignored the screaming of his every cell, the memory in his muscles to move toward Blaine and push him into a future that wasn’t Kurt’s to decide. Blaine took one step forward, Kurt one step back. Another— _I’m sorry—_ and then another— _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—_ and then the fire in Blaine’s expression was but an afterthought, an image burning behind Kurt’s eyelids as he sprinted down the concourse.

 

**Distance: 14,369 miles**

**Additional Listening:** [Where I Stood](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75646084970) by Missy Higgins

*

**Day 099: Monday 24th December, 2012  
The Boy with the Band-Aid (Alaska)**

_“No, we already wrote_ Into the Wild _down for Oregon.”_

 _“Okay, what about_ Insomnia?”

_“Looks pretty good. Okay, only one left!”_

 

Blaine had had a new text post open for nearly an hour, typing and deleting over and over again until finally he just wrote, _Fuck everything._ After hitting ‘Submit,’ he pushed the laptop away and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. It was nearly five a.m., and he was exhausted. But with the torrential downpour of rain battering against the R.V., not to mention the anger thrumming in his veins, there was no way he could sleep. In all his life he’d never experienced such rage—not at Roberto Mancini, not at Kurt in Chicago or Minneapolis, not even at his own father. The only thing keeping him from going postal and trashing the R.V. were the memories of his grandfather that lingered in every square inch of the place—that, and the note full of empty apologies that he held between his fingers, thumb rubbing over the ink almost obsessively until it began to fade beneath his fingerprint.

Blaine was done trying to be fair, trying to see things from Kurt’s perspective as well as his own. He didn’t care that Kurt was scared, that he’d discovered Blaine’s song and run away because he’d thought he was doing what was best. He’d about had his fill, at this point, of what Kurt wanted and needed—he had changed so much of himself for this boy, and for what? To be left when they had a path laid out before them, just because he was too scared to walk it?

“Fuck that,” he muttered, finally crumpling Kurt’s note and tossing it away.

Now that Kurt was gone, there was too much silence. The air was too still. Some of his things still hung in the closets, and he’d left behind his toothbrush in the bathroom, and there was still some leftover lasagna in the refrigerator from the night before. But these were all trace elements of a love obviously now lost to him. For the first time, Blaine imagined, really imagined, what his life would be like without Kurt in it, because Kurt had been right; they wouldn’t recover from this. But that wasn’t the thing that made Blaine angriest of all—no, it was the fact that when he imagined life without Kurt, he saw nothing.

It was Blaine’s phone, vibrating across the table where he’d left it, that pulled him from his imagining. When he picked it up, he saw April smiling up at him from the screen.

After a moment’s hesitation, he answered, “Hey, Flower.”

“Hey,” she said quietly. “Um… Are you okay?”

Blaine snorted derisively. “Who the hell does he think he is?” he spat, under no illusions that April was in the dark. “He keeps me hanging for months, fucks somebody else to try and get me out of his system or _whatever_ the hell that was, and then when he finally gives in like it’s some big chore, he up and fucking leaves the day before my birthday.”

“Jesus, Blaine,” April whispered, and in the background Blaine could hear the sound of a door closing. “What happened?”

“Well, the movies and TV shows lie.”

“Okay…”

“They make chasing someone through an airport look a shit-ton easier than it really is,” Blaine said, his words tailing off into an almost hysterical laugh as he began to pace back and forth. The anger surged up in him anew, and he couldn’t dam it up anymore; he had nowhere left to redirect it… So he let loose. “They wouldn’t let me check in using my ticket to Anchorage, so I had to buy a goddamn ticket to Nebraska just to get through security, and then _getting_ through security took _forever,_ and for what?

“For nothing; it was all for fucking _nothing,_ because I caught up to him and he _still_ left!” Blaine exclaimed, voice rising. “And do you want to know the worst part? I don’t get it. _Nothing_ happened! I was hanging out with some friends, and he was happy when I left, and now he’s just gone. So I guess that’s it. It’s over. What happened on the road trip will stay on the fucking road trip after all.”

There was a long silence after his tirade, Blaine’s rapid, uneven breathing the only sound.

“Blaine, what the _fuck_ is going on?” April finally asked, and Blaine sighed.

“I was hoping you’d tell me,” he said, waving his free hand before letting it drop limply to his side. “Kurt just took off, says I shouldn’t let him hold me back from my dream and that he was getting in the way.”

“Motherfucker,” April said. “That fucking _idiot;_ I can’t even believe him sometimes.”

“That about sums it up, yeah. And—actually, no, this is the worst part: it is _just_ like him to take off right before a storm hits. Everything out of SeaTac is delayed and I can’t do _anything_ so I’m just sitting here like an _idiot,”_ Blaine said. “Is he with you?”

“His flight gets in at six,” she said, “and I’m the asshole who said I’d go pick him up. To be honest, I’m tempted to fucking leave him there.”

“Don’t do that,” Blaine said automatically—even with his blood boiling, he couldn’t quite hold himself in check. Sighing again, he said, “You’re his best friend. He’s gonna need you.”

After a pause, she asked, “And what about you?”

“What do you mean, what about me? Game’s over, I might as well go home,” Blaine said.

“Excuse me? No,” April said. “No, that is _not_ the Blaine Anderson I know—“

“April.”

“You two fucking love each other, okay? And it’s more than that; this has been going on for _years_ and I’ve _seen_ it, fucking _everyone_ has—“

“April.”

“—and I did _not_ spend the past three fucking months sending you…”

Blaine stopped in his tracks as she trailed off, muttering swears under her breath. “Sending me what?” he asked slowly, repeating the question more loudly when she just continued muttering. “Sending me _what,_ April?”

“Ugh. Well, I was going to tell you anyway, and if it really _is_ game over, you might as well know now,” April said, resignation clear in her tone. “You’ve been getting messages on your blog, right? Both of you have. Though I guess neither of you knew that you both had blogs. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I’m F. I was the one sending you the songs.”

“You’re F,” Blaine repeated weakly. “F for… F for Flower. Fuck, how did I not see that?”

“Because you _and_ Kurt have a habit of not seeing what’s right in front of your dumbass faces,” April said.

Blaine dropped heavily onto the couch, his exhaustion finally getting the better of him. He barely even had the energy to be surprised at the revelation that she’d been acting as puppet master for months. Who even knew what songs she’d been sending to Kurt? Had all of this been because of her? Would anything have happened between them without her? And, knowing that, would he have even wanted it to?

Pinching between his eyes, he said, “April, I’m so fucking tired. I’m tired of putting myself out there, tired of waiting and being patient, and I’m tired of chasing after him when he’s given me no reason to. I mean, honestly, what am I even still doing here? I should have just cut my losses and turned the fucking R.V. around as soon as I got back.”

“Was it worth it?” she asked. “All the putting yourself out there, all the chasing. Did it make you happy?”

Blaine bit down on the inside of his cheek, exhaling slowly and wishing he hadn’t picked up the phone.

Without waiting for an answer, she continued, “You love him. That’s what you’re still doing there.”

“I wish I didn’t,” he said quietly. “I wish that none of this had ever happened.”

She scoffed at that. “No, you don’t. So what are you going to do now?”

Casting his gaze around the interior of the R.V., inescapable traces of Kurt everywhere, Blaine closed his eyes against it all and thought for a moment. “Maybe I _should_ go back to Maine. See if we can talk this all out when he gets back.”

“Talking about your feelings? What a world,” she deadpanned.

“Well, what would you suggest?”

“You’ve still got that ticket to Anchorage, right?”

 _“No,”_ Blaine said. “I mean—yes, I do. But I’m not chasing after him anymore. If he wants me, he can come fucking apologize.”

“Oh my god, you’re ridiculous!” she exclaimed exasperatedly. “Maybe if both of you had just stopped being such _guys_ about this whole thing and actually, you know, _talked_ to each other from the start, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

“Yes, April, I get it. Okay? We’ve both been dumb as shit,” Blaine said. “So… You’re telling me to come to Anchorage.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” she said gently. “I’m just saying that you already have the ticket, and I don’t think this is over until it’s over. And…”

“And what?” he prompted.

“And I have one last song for you,” she said almost timidly, as if she was expecting Blaine to bite her head off. _“Sweet Disposition,_ by The Temper Trap. Do you know it?”

He laughed humorlessly, threw up a hand and said, “It’s my favorite song.”

“Do me a favor and go listen to it? And then… Then do whatever you need to do,” April said. “And I’ll be here for you whatever happens. You know that.”

“I know,” Blaine said. “But no more songs, okay? You’re way too good at the puppet master thing.”

“Just making sure you guys finally saw each other,” she said.

“Hey—how did you even find my blog, anyway?” he asked as the thought occurred to him.

“Googling your name isn’t exactly difficult, honey,” she said.

Managing a small smile, he said, “Thanks, Flower.”

It wasn’t until they hung up and Blaine slumped against the back of the couch that he made the connection between April’s parting words and what Carole had said the day he and Kurt had left Maine: “You’ll figure it out, sweetheart. Just _see_ him, alright?”

Blaine trudged into the bedroom, fighting off a yawn and blinking to try and keep himself awake. Way too much had happened over the past few hours for him to process, too much to even leave space to care that Kurt had found his song. He brushed the scraps of paper off the bed sheets and watched them flutter to the ground, hating the fact that his anger was slowly dissipating and leaving behind a terrible, scarring ache—he missed Kurt, and what he hated the most was that if he’d known their last kiss was going to be their last, he wouldn’t ever have stopped.

He collapsed onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling until it blurred— _Philadelphia, shell-shocked, Kurt curling into him and falling asleep._ The rain was hammering dully on the roof and windows— _West Virginia, torpidly frantic, Kurt’s fingers twisting inside him._ The leftover taste of his single cocktail was turning stale in his mouth— _Portland, disbelief, Kurt promising him the world._ He took in a deep breath just so that he could sigh— _Bowdoin, comfort, Kurt’s morning double-spritz of cologne never changing from one day to the next._ The sheets grew warmer beneath his cheek as he turned his head to look at the clock on the nightstand— _everywhere after Florida, everything at once, Kurt, Kurt, Kurt._

Growing tired of turning his phone over and over in his hands, he held it over his face and scrolled to his Top 40 playlist, an ever-changing selection of songs to which he couldn’t add without taking away. [_Sweet Disposition_](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75647123974) was the oldest song on there, and had held the top spot ever since he’d discovered it.

He hit play— _sweet disposition—_ his eyes drifted closed— _never too soon—_ and as he let the song lull him into the cold embrace of a lonely sleep— _oh, reckless abandon—_ he thought of Kurt— _like no one’s watching you—_ and wondered if he was doing the same, somewhere up in the sky.

 

 _I swear to god when I get ahold of him,_ Blaine thought as he pushed his way outside and a blast of frigid night air assaulted him. _First, he leaves. Then, April reads me the riot act. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I’m so dumb that I decide to follow him, and then I get to spend the entire flight sitting next to a crying baby. On Christmas fucking Eve._

These were all trials for which he could shift at least a little of the blame—particularly the storm over Seattle that had delayed all outbound flights until late evening. He’d awoken to it around noon, the rain shot through with snowflakes and hailstones which pelted the roof and sides of the R.V. until he’d wanted nothing more than to bury his head beneath his pillow and go back to sleep. Instead, Blaine had yielded to the tugging in his gut.

The one thing for which he _couldn’t_ shift the blame, however, was his utter failure to pack anything appropriate for Alaska. His mind had been scattered, fissures in his own self-trust distracting him from the task at hand, and somehow he’d made it all the way to the departure lounge before realizing that he’d packed for warm weather. Which was why he was standing outside Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, dressed only in jeans and a button-down, freezing his ass off and cursing under his breath. He yielded three cabs to other harried-looking passengers before deciding that, in this particular instance, manners were for squares and jumped into the next one that came along. 

“The Tap Root on Spenard Road, please,” he told the driver, raising his voice over the country music playing through the crackling radio. The driver grunted in the affirmative, and Blaine couldn’t exactly blame him. It was Christmas Eve, after all; he probably had a family to be getting home to.

The ten-minute journey passed at a crawl, but finally they were pulling up outside an unassuming, one-story building with red siding and the name of the bar in contemporary, swooping text to the right of the door. Blaine paid his fare, retrieved his suitcase from the trunk, and took a deep breath.

The second Blaine stepped inside, he saw Kurt sitting at a small, round table by the deliberately weathered bar, watching April and the rest of the band up on stage. There was a slump to his shoulders and despite his immaculate outfit, his hair was almost on end, standing in fifty different directions and lacking its usual coiffed perfection. It staggered Blaine, that lack of posture, and he hadn't even been able to keep track of such a gradual change because he'd been too close until now, but that was how Kurt used to hold himself. It had been less than twenty-four hours, and it was like looking at a different person entirely.

[A soft guitar intro](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75648178015) filled the bar, and Kurt shifted uncomfortably, his body language matching Blaine's inner turmoil. As Blaine approached Kurt’s table, April's haunting, breathy voice floated through the speakers, _“Fall forward in the atmosphere; it’s a heavy load to bear.”_

Bending down to speak into Kurt’s ear with his heart louder than his words, Blaine asked, “Is she on her own tonight?”

Kurt started and looked up at Blaine through wide, panicked eyes. “Mostly,” he answered, his voice thin and rasping.

Blaine gestured to the empty chair next to him and, after a moment of clear trepidation, Kurt nodded. As he was taking his seat, he asked, “How’s she doing?”

“Some upbeat stuff, but mostly ballads. Seems to be that kind of crowd,” he commented, glancing around as if to ensure he was looking anywhere but at Blaine. “I requested _My Love_ by Sia about an hour ago. She was flawless, as usual.”

“The _Twilight_ soundtrack? Really, Kurt?” Blaine asked, attempting to overcome the tense awkwardness with the good-natured ribbing that had formed one of the foundations of their relationship for years.

Kurt looked at him sharply for a second before seeming to give in to the tug of a wry answering grin. “Just because they’re bad movies doesn’t mean the song is any less beautiful.”

“It is beautiful,” Blaine conceded, “and at least _Eclipse_ was the best one of the series.”

“Probably had something to do with David Slade.”

“Probably.”

They fell silent, Kurt picking at the label on his beer bottle and Blaine fiddling with his suitcase handle, trying not to watch him. He didn’t want to be the first one to break, not this time. Not when, after getting over the initial shock, Kurt looked utterly unsurprised to see him.

 _“Where are you? I am already gone,”_ April sang, Marcie and Liam’s backing vocals rounding out their lilting three-part harmony; when Blaine looked up at the stage, April was watching him with kind eyes that slipped closed as she repeated the lyric, obviously singing it for them and all that was broken between them.

At length, the better part of the label shredded, Kurt stilled his hands and turned toward Blaine. Without meeting his eyes, he asked, “Why are you here?”

Blaine’s dulled anger flared back to life, and he crossed his arms over his chest to keep from reaching out and shaking him. “You know exactly why I’m here, Kurt. I’m here because this isn’t finished, not by a long shot.”

Kurt shook his head, blinking rapidly. “I wanted to…”

“Wanted to what, Kurt? Wanted to set me free so that I could go off and live my dreams without you?” Blaine hissed, voice low so as not to cause a scene. He still had _some_ manners. “Newsflash. I don’t need you to rescue me, and I’m not your fucking holiday pet. I’m not someone you can keep around while I’m fun and then kick to the curb whenever it’s fucking convenient.”

“That is _not_ what this is,” Kurt spat. The anger clear in his tone gave Blaine a perverse sort of satisfaction.

“That’s _exactly_ what this is,” he countered, leaning forward over the table. “This is you suddenly having to stay the course with another person, and that _terrifies_ you. But why wouldn’t it? Especially after all you went through with Max, and all those boys that turned out not to measure up after you half-fell for them, and let’s not forget how my leaving for a year was all about you.”

“Don’t—“

“You owe me a fucking explanation, Kurt Hummel,” Blaine interrupted, fixing him with a hard look.

“I know. I...” Kurt trailed off quietly, shaking his head. His eyes were trained on the bottle in front of him and he pulled out his Saint Christopher from beneath his shirt, running his fingers along the chain and capturing the silver disc between his thumb and forefinger. “All of this, it’s… It’s too much all at once. You, and this trip, and L.A.—something’s going to give sooner or later, right? Because I can’t possibly have _all_ of it.”

“Why not?” Blaine asked slowly.

“Because no one gets _everything_ they want,” Kurt said, finally looking up. His eyes were close to brimming over, and the sight of it stung. “Who the hell am I that I get to be with the boy I somehow managed to fall in love with at _six years old,_ let alone get to take him with me to do something that’s my dream?”

“Kurt—“

“But that’s exactly it, Blaine— _my_ dream. Your dream is up on that stage,” he barreled on, gesturing to the band. “And I can’t take that away from you. I won’t.”

“So why didn’t you even _think_ about New York?” Blaine asked. “Better yet, why didn’t you even give me a chance and talk to me about it before making me chase you all the way to fucking _Alaska?”_

“I’m sorry—“

“And how _dare_ you ever say that you’re afraid _I’d_ leave _you._ You remember that, on Santa Monica Pier? How you said that _you_ didn’t trust _me?”_

“Of course I do—“

“I mean, you do get that by trying to make this about me, you’ve actually made it all about you, right?”

“Blaine, I’m _sorry!”_ Kurt exclaimed, earning them a few dirty looks from nearby patrons. In a lower, yet somehow even less controlled voice, he said, “I’m sorry, I _am._ I told you not to follow me; I never wanted this.”

“Of course I followed you, you fucking idiot. You took what we were _finally_ starting to build together, and you threw it away just to prove yourself right. And I needed you to know _exactly_ how much you fucked up. ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to cut it this time, Kurt, because you know something?” Blaine said, his hands shaking and his voice becoming more and more unsteady. Taking a deep breath, he continued, “I wanted to be the score to your movie. That’s kind of how I’ve started to think of us lately—me the music, and you the pictures. But… Maybe I should just be a deleted scene. Maybe that’s all I was ever going to be. And if you want to leave me on the cutting room floor, then _leave_ me there. I don’t want to chase you anymore.”

A beat of silence passed and then Kurt’s hand shot out to grab Blaine’s wrist. “I wanted to come back to you as soon as the plane took off,” he said in a near whisper, looking at him with wild, desperate eyes and tears slowly rolling down his face. “Please, B. _Please_ tell me how to fix this, how to fix us.”

Gently, Blaine pulled out of Kurt’s grip. He wasn’t angry anymore—he was sad, and resigned, and exhausted by the last three and a half months. He sighed and got to his feet as April’s song finished; the crowd loudly applauded her, and after thanking them, she offered him a tentative smile from the stage.

And then she started to play a completely stripped-down, acoustic version of _[Anything Could Happen](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75648508909)._ She probably thought she was helping—a puppet master’s encore—rather than playing out the tearing asunder of something that could have defined the rest of their days. Kurt gazed up at him with the look of a heartbroken man—Blaine knew it from when he had awoken that afternoon after a fitful sleep and caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. But even with their song playing, a hushed affirmation to which they should have been listening with soft smiles and even softer words, Blaine hadn’t the wherewithal to tell him that all this could be mended—not with jagged edges pressing between his ribs and a desolate future wrapped tightly around his chest.

Standing up straight, he blinked back tears and took a deep, shuddering breath. “It shouldn’t be this difficult, Kurt. Maybe we’re too broken to fix. I might be here, I might have chased you all the way here, but I—I… I’m worth more than that.”

“Blaine, please,” Kurt begged, hiccupping over a sob, “please stay with me.”

He bent down, cupped Kurt’s face with both hands, and kissed his cheek. He lingered there a moment, pressing his forehead to Kurt’s temple and willing himself not to cry even as a tear slipped free and disappeared into Kurt’s skin. “I can’t,” he whispered.

_“But since we found out, since we found out that anything could happen…”_

Screwing his eyes tightly shut, he let Kurt go. He turned his back on the interior of the Taproot and started walking, pulling his suitcase along behind him as he wound his way through tables of patrons who paid him no mind, and even when he heard Kurt calling his name around a strangled choke, he kept moving.

It was freezing outside, the empty streets silent as snow began to fall, and his ragged breaths came out in thick plumes of white that he walked through as if beginning to traverse the foggy future he saw before him. He’d had _everything,_ and now he was leaving behind only footprints that would soon disappear.

The more Blaine tried to blink back his sorrow, the stronger it hit him. He made it as far as the gas station across the parking lot and stopped, hanging onto one of the roof pillars as he doubled over and swallowed convulsively. It _hurt,_ cold and deep in his gut, radiating outward until he was freezing with it, his hands shaking against the concrete. His head was swimming, entrenched in flashbulb memories of sun-chapped smiles and snow-bitten touches, and he was _shattering._ How could it end like this? How could it end at all?

His only instinct was telling him to go back, to grab Kurt’s hand and never let it go, but where would he be taken if he did that? What would—

“You’re not a deleted scene.”

Blaine started, jumping so quickly that he managed to hit his head on the pillar. Pain exploded behind his eyes and he swayed on his feet, and then there were strong hands gripping his arms to keep him upright. He raised a hand to cradle his head and squinted up at Kurt, who somehow looked more wrecked than Blaine felt, impossibly enough.

“Are you okay?” Kurt asked in a small voice, his stormy blue eyes looking at Blaine with concern.

“Peachy,” Blaine managed, his heart pounding double time. “Today really can’t get any worse, can it?”

“Never say never,” Kurt murmured, slowly pulling Blaine’s hand away and examining his head in the dim light of the streetlamps. His fingers gently combed through Blaine’s curls and it took everything Blaine had not to close his eyes and give himself over to it.

“You came after me,” he said.

“And I’m glad I did,” Kurt replied, “seeing as you’re going around giving yourself concussions now.”

“Well, if you hadn’t appeared out of nowhere to tell me—“ Blaine paused. “What did you say before?”

Kurt’s hands fell away and he wrapped his arms around his middle. “You’re not a deleted scene, Blaine.”

Blaine shook his head, suppressing the urge to wince at the dull throbbing. “I can’t trust that. How am I supposed to trust that?”

Kurt looked up, blinking and inhaling deeply. “You don’t have to,” he said. “I’m not asking you to, and I don’t deserve your trust. I don’t deserve _you._ But I had to come after you, I had to try.”

“Kurt…”

“I don’t want it to end this way, Blaine. I don’t want it to end at all.”

“You haven’t exactly…” Blaine trailed off, gesturing around them.

“I know,” Kurt said. “That’s why… Here—“

Blaine watched as he reached into his chest pocket and produced a Band-Aid; he quickly pulled off the backing, cautiously reaching forward to stick it onto the front of Blaine’s shirt, right over his heart. He left his hand there and, with his eyes fixed on it, said, “I’m not crossing my heart. That’s pretty worthless at this point, and if you swear on a promise, you have to swear on something you believe in. You’re the only thing I believe in anymore.”

“What are you promising?” Blaine asked slowly.

“Back in Vegas, you said that I just had to be with you. That we’d figure out the rest later,” Kurt said. “But I’m not promising that, because promises have to be specific. So I’m promising to be with you, to follow you wherever you want to go, to never judge you when you eat an entire loaf of sourdough in one sitting, and to love you with everything I have.”

Blaine wanted to smile, wanted to breathe out the relief that suddenly flooded his system—that sensation of being wanted, feeling special, and knowing that he needed no more than this was dizzying. Stalling for precious seconds, he asked, “Where the hell did you get a Band-Aid?”

“There was a first aid kit at the bar,” Kurt said. “I had to give them my last twenty dollars for it, so if you don’t take me back I’m pretty screwed, because I don’t have cash for an airport cab.”

“You paid twenty dollars for a Band-Aid,” Blaine said flatly.

“I guess I sort of… Volunteered the money? But I was desperate! It was either that or cut myself, and you know how I feel about blood. Plus, then I would have _needed_ the Band-Aid…”

“Some cabs take credit cards these days.”

“I can’t believe you’re bringing in logic to ruin my perfect scene,” Kurt said, humor gradually fading from his tone. He swallowed, and said quietly, “This is our movie moment.”

Blaine shook his head. “Movies end.”

“I don’t want ours to,” Kurt said quickly, his fingertips curling into Blaine’s shirt.

“Couldn’t you have realized that, I don’t know… Yesterday?”

“April kinda… Beat it out of me. Literally.”

“You know, you call me the nomad, but you’re the one who runs…”

“Maybe I just had some running to get out of my system.”

“But you’re done now?” Blaine asked, looking up at him and silently imploring him to say yes.

“No,” Kurt said, and Blaine’s heart fell until he added, “It’s who I am. Remember what I said, back in Providence? About not settling? The difference now is that… That I found someone I’d like to run _with._ And he makes me not care about where I’m running to.”

“Why not?” Blaine asked.

“Because…” Kurt said, stepping closer and reaching up to cup Blaine’s cheek; Blaine leaned into the touch and met Kurt’s eyes. “Because he makes everything else go away. I’ve loved him for nearly seventeen years, and one day I’d like to be able to say that I’ve loved him my whole life.”

Blaine studied him for a moment—the dark circles underneath his eyes; the wrinkled front of his shirt; the slump in his shoulders under the weight of his penance—and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the snowflakes falling. Falling with them—slowly, gradually, steadily—was easy, because it was right. He stepped forward and crushed his lips against Kurt’s, swallowing Kurt’s surprised squeak and humming against his tongue. Kurt tensed momentarily, but then seemed to melt back into his former self, standing straight and winding his arms around Blaine’s neck as a gust of icy wind swept past.

A clock struck midnight somewhere in the distance and, breathing heavily as he pulled back, Kurt dusted a kiss to the left of Blaine’s mouth. “Happy birthday, B,” he whispered breathlessly.

“Merry Christmas, Kurt,” Blaine replied, wrapping his arms around Kurt’s waist.

“Tell me something you want,” Kurt said.

“What, you didn’t get me anything?” Blaine asked, and finally, Kurt smiled. “There _is_ something, actually.”

“Hit me.”

“I want you to _never_ do that to me again.”

“I promise,” Kurt said quickly, nodding with wide eyes. “What else? What else do you want?”

Considering, for a moment, not only the question but the choice before him, Blaine realized that it wasn’t a matter of caving, or of going with the flow anymore. With the exception of Wyoming, he’d been sitting back and letting things happen for far too long.

“Just you,” he said, with utter conviction. “I just want you to stay with me. For good.”

Kurt closed his eyes and smiled, letting his head fall back for a second. The world was lit as if from below by the white carpeting the ground; it covered the black and gray and made everything seem brand new. They weren’t so far from the bar that Blaine couldn’t hear the music; as Kurt looked down at him and took his hand to pull him away from the pillar, he could just hear April winding up their song with the words, _“I know it’s gonna be, I know it’s gonna be.”_

“Come on,” Kurt said, reaching for Blaine’s suitcase. “You’re shivering; let’s get inside.”

“I’m not cold,” Blaine protested, and tugged on his hand. “There’s one other thing.”

“What is it?” Kurt asked slowly.

“What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip,” Blaine said. “When we get to L.A., we both get a fresh start.”

“You’re sure? About all of it?” Kurt asked.

“Who says any of it has to be permanent? So we go to L.A. and make a movie about killer tomatoes,” Blaine said. Kurt chuckled and bit his lip. “Then maybe we end up in New York for the next thing, or Europe, or Australia. Maybe even the Steve side of Montana if we’re really lucky.”

“My own personal lumberjack? Ugh, L.A., what was I _thinking?”_

“My point is—“

“That we’ll be together,” Kurt said softly, “so who cares where the train takes us?”

“Exactly,” Blaine said.

For the moment, they didn’t need any more words—that much was clear in the way Kurt simply took Blaine’s suitcase and laced their fingers together. They walked back to the bar in silence, save for returning the Christmas wishes of the two punky girls smoking outside. Though it was cold, and though it had been the longest day of Blaine’s life, the air seemed abundant where before it had been so very thin.

“I’m so sorry, B,” Kurt said outside the door. “I’m sorry to have done that to you.”

“For now, just… Just be with me, okay?” Blaine said, his fingers curled around the door handle.

“Okay,” Kurt said, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smile, and after one last quick kiss, Blaine followed him into the warmth.

 

**Distance: 15,815 miles**

*

**Day 100: Tuesday 25th December, 2012  
Stoke the Fires, Start the Engines (Hawaii)**

“Crystal Skull, Raiders, Jurassic Park… _Anything but_ 50 First Dates.”

_“Hmm. Harrison Ford or Sam Neill. Tough one.”_

_“I honestly don’t care. You pick.”_

 

The moment he’d stepped off the plane at Kahului Airport, the island’s warm air wrapping around him in a welcoming embrace, Kurt had finally begun to breathe freely again. Here in Hawaii, the oxygen was somehow far more plentiful than in had been ‘on the mainland,’ as he’d heard numerous locals referring to it—and when he walked out of the Banana Wind gift shop, he took in a deep lungful of fresh night air.

He drove their rental car back to the hotel at a leisurely speed; his stomach was still full almost to bursting from dinner at Mama’s Fish House, a casual yet high-end restaurant in Paia where it seemed that everything on the menu had been caught by a local. Now that he had a little time and space to himself, he felt ready to begin processing everything that had passed between him and Blaine over the course of the last twenty-four hours.

All that he could really remember, however, were flashes: the warm squeeze of Blaine’s palm at odds with his cold fingertips as they walked back inside the Tap Root; the strange, unfamiliar sound of his own laugh when Blaine had made a joke about The Cannery, back home in Brunswick; the burn in his cheeks when, in their hastily procured hotel room, Kurt had studied the expressions playing across Blaine’s face as he watched Kurt’s video diaries.

And the talk, that long overdue talk; hours and hours of speaking until their throats were hoarse and their mouths parched, touching and kissing for bottomless minutes in between just to let their voices rest. Spurts of sharp anger that leapt into the air yet fizzled faster than they had come—barbed fireworks that still lingered in the recesses of Kurt’s mind. Long ribbons of apologies and explanations begun with start-and-stop words but soon unfurling, honesty being pulled from them both at long last until everything was laid bare—their secrets, their lies, and their deepest fears.

Then that morning, his heart safely in Blaine’s hand and Blaine’s hand in his, they had said goodbye to their friends and started walking, the first step feeling to Kurt as if it encompassed all sixteen thousand miles they’d traveled together, and so many more besides.

Living in the aftermath was slightly odd, and very wonderful, but it wasn’t until there was an ocean separating them from their most recent history that Kurt could shake off the remnants of the convulsive agony that had had him practically begging a bartender for a Band-Aid. He had come so close— _too_ close—to losing Blaine forever, and he was acutely aware that for a moment, he had.

This was why, after dinner, Kurt had dropped Blaine back at their hotel overlooking Kaanapali Beach and driven into town to pick up something for Blaine, something that Kurt hoped would cement his apologies and promises in a way that, to him, words hadn’t seemed to.

When he arrived at the beach where he had asked Blaine to meet him, Kurt took a moment to slip off his shoes and look out at the shoreline. Blaine was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, silhouetted against the water, the breeze rippling the back of his t-shirt. Even from the back he looked peaceful, and Kurt approached slowly, the soft white sand beneath and between his toes muffling his steps.

“Hey,” Kurt said quietly as he dropped onto the sand next to Blaine and leaned his head on Blaine’s shoulder. He set down his shoes and the paper bag he was carrying in favor of wrapping his arms around Blaine’s waist, and smiled when Blaine shifted to loop an arm around his shoulders. “What are you thinking about?”

“Fifty states in a hundred days,” Blaine replied, his tone conveying a certain amount of disbelief. “We really did it.”

“Did you think we wouldn’t?” Kurt asked.

“Well, the buzz word was ‘ambitious’ when we were telling people about it,” Blaine said. “But we made it.”

“Look how far we’ve come,” Kurt said, his words an exhalation. “You patched things up with your dad; I came to terms with—with Mom… We’re going to work on a movie together… Everything’s different now.”

“It is,” Blaine agreed. “Especially you and me. Do you…?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you think any of it would have happened if we hadn’t come on this trip?”

Kurt mulled it over for a few moments, casting his mind back to the day that Blaine had come back to Brunswick, taller and broader and more worldly—though it had taken next to no time for them to find their groove again, Kurt now knew that there had been a marked difference in their relationship, even though he’d denied it for so long.

“Yes,” he finally answered, turning his gaze out to the waves lapping gently at the shore. “There might have been less drama, or… Maybe there might have been even more, I don’t know. But it would have happened. It was bound to, one way or another.”

“I think you’re right,” Blaine whispered, inclining his head toward Kurt’s and pressing a kiss into his hair.

“Do you think you would have figured out your dream if we’d stayed in Brunswick?” Kurt asked carefully.

“The only reason I _have_ that dream is because of you,” Blaine said matter-of-factly. “But like you said, it would have happened, one way or another. Don’t get me wrong; I still love film, and I still want to make beautiful things with you like we always talked about, but now it’s…”

“You’re the music, and I’m the pictures,” Kurt finished quietly. “I guess it just… It never really occurred to me that I was worthy of that.”

“There’s a reason I didn’t just turn around and head for Maine, idiot,” Blaine said fondly. “Do you really think I would have gotten on a plane for anyone else?”

“I’m sorry for what I put you through,” Kurt said quickly—the need to apologize didn’t feel like it would ever wane. After the sixth or seventh time Blaine had begun absolving him with kisses and he did the same now, craning his neck and kissing each of Kurt’s lips in turn. The warm pressure of his lips was a catch and release that had Kurt intoxicated all over again within seconds.

“I got something for you,” he blurted when they pulled apart—he’d been waiting, biding his time for the right moment, and it suddenly hit him that there was no better moment than this. He inched away, sitting up straight and reaching for the paper bag emblazoned with the Banana Wind logo. Biting his lip, he pulled out the floating lantern he’d bought, along with a novelty lighter decorated with glazed seashells, and presented the lantern to Blaine.

Blaine studied it for a moment, and then asked, “What’s this?”

“Your birthday and Christmas present,” Kurt said. “What I actually got you is still back in the R.V., so really this is just a placeholder.”

“You got me a floating lantern?” Blaine asked, looking at Kurt with so much warmth and fondness in his eyes that Kurt couldn’t quite hold his gaze, or else he’d never be able to get out the speech he’d been preparing all day.

Gently, he took the lantern back and set about unfolding it. “I heard they do this on Magic Island every year,” he began. “Thousands of people show up and light these lanterns. Some people do it to remember people who have passed away, and some pray for their future, and then they float them out on the water. It's—it's silly, but...”

In the moments of fruitless silence that overtook him, Kurt fixated on the lantern’s smooth, waxed paper folds, as if he was constructing something far more substantial. And then Blaine’s hand found his knee; it was a simple touch, but a tether nonetheless.

“Last night, there was one thing that I didn’t tell you about,” Kurt said, hands faltering on the lantern. “I actually thought about it just before I fell asleep, and it’s been playing on my mind ever since.”

“Okay…” Blaine said, shaking his head a little.

“You never asked about what happened in South Carolina, and I was grateful for that, because even after my big drama moment in Santa Fe, I didn’t want to talk about it,” Kurt admitted. “I was sitting by the fountain thinking about Mom, and this psych professor came over to me… He looked like every stereotypical movie professor, you know? Tweed jacket, mustache, briefcase… The whole nine yards. Anyway, we got to talking, and it turned out that Mom was one of his students.”

“Wow.”

“I know.”

“Tell me the rest?”

Taking a deep breath, Kurt reached for Blaine’s hand and linked their fingers. “He asked me to toss a coin into the fountain and make a wish, and I know you’re not supposed to tell people your wishes because then they won’t come true, but I’m swearing to you right now that I will _make_ this wish come true.”

“What did you wish for?” Blaine asked.

“I wished to be what you need me to be,” Kurt said, looking deep into Blaine’s eyes and willing him to believe. “Blaine, what we have—what I have with you, it’s…” he trailed off, searching for a way to convey what he had no idea how to put into words. “It’s beyond _anything._ I’ve never believed in not having control over what happens to me, but _you_ happened, and I didn’t have any control over that at all. You were the best thing that _ever_ happened to me, and you still are, and I knew as soon as that plane took off that I was doomed because you’re _it._ You’re the end of the movie.”

Blaine blinked at him for a moment before turning his gaze skyward and letting out a gruff sigh. Slowly, he scrubbed a hand over his eyes and then, faster than Kurt could register, closed the gap between them and captured Kurt’s lips with his own. It was another of those kisses that made Kurt feel like he was drowning in Blaine, seventeen years old all over again with his hands shaking almost uncontrollably as they tangled themselves in Blaine’s hair and held on for dear life. How could he have ever even _attempted_ to walk away from this?

Breathing heavily as he pulled away, Blaine said, “Kurt, you are _exactly_ who I need you to be. Because you’re it for me, too, you know. Ever since we met.”

Though Kurt’s eyes still felt raw from all the emotional purging he’d done over the past forty-eight hours, they once more filled with tears and he pitched forward to bury his face in the hollow of Blaine’s neck, fingers twisting into his shirt and clutching tightly.

The sound of paper crumpling was what made him pull back, sniffing harshly and laughing at Blaine’s amused smile. “Shut up,” Kurt chided him, picking up the lantern and straightening it out where it had become creased. As he passed it to Blaine and handed him the lighter, he said, “Make a wish.”

Blaine turned the lighter over and over between his fingers, watching Kurt with a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, then got to his feet, holding the lantern aloft. In the next instant the lantern was lit, the faint lines etched into the paper suddenly fully distinguishable—all around the outside of the lantern were sophisticated drawings of birds and fish, musical notes and swirls, flowers and flames.

“Get up here,” Blaine said, and Kurt got to his feet, taking the side of the lantern that Blaine wasn’t holding. They held it between them, taking the time to study the drawings in all their intricacy.

“What are you wishing for?” Kurt asked, quickly adding, “Don’t tell me if it won’t come true.”

Sighing a little, Blaine answered, “I wish this trip didn’t have to end. I wish we could just stay here.”

“Well, we’ve got three days,” Kurt pointed out. “And maybe one day we can come back.”

“One day,” Blaine said wistfully. “What about you? What’s your wish?”

Kurt waved a hand dismissively and shook his head. “I’ve wished for enough. Besides, it’s _your_ birthday.”

“It’s also Christmas,” Blaine said, stepping closer so that they had to raise the lantern over their heads. It was beginning to strain against them as more and more hot air filled it, and Kurt briefly wondered what it would be like to just float away into the atmosphere, Blaine by his side and the trappings of himself and the world left far behind. “Come on. There’s gotta be something.”

Kurt looked up at the lantern, at the drawing nearest his fingers—a couple in a close embrace. “I wish you could’ve been my first,” he said, the words tumbling out of his mouth almost before he’d had to time to think them or realize that they were unequivocally true. “We should have been each other’s firsts.”

Smiling up at him, Blaine raised his eyebrows and pushed the lantern out of Kurt’s grip and into the air. They watched it rise together, swaying this way and that, following the breeze on its journey skyward. Blaine’s hand found Kurt’s, and nudged his leg. “Don’t you think it’s more important that we’re each other’s lasts instead?”

“You’re way too smooth for your own good, Anderson,” Kurt replied.

Blaine hummed as his knuckles drifted back and forth over Kurt's leg, and even though there were thousands of miles between them and Brunswick, the distance didn’t matter; it was another of those moments from Kurt’s back deck, the kind that made Kurt wish life had a pause button—but only for a fleeting handful of seconds. This time, he was looking ahead, seeing a life laid out before them. It was filled to brimming with the promise of breakfasts spent kissing crumbs from fingertips, long nights devoted to burying themselves between smooth skin and soft sheets, a DVD library that they’d look upon fondly because it would contain every single movie they’d watched this trip. They’d sift through screenplays until Blaine found the right story to tell through his music, and they’d hop on and off planes holding hands until Kurt found the right location in which to tell it. 

“Well, I’m not _that_ smooth…” Blaine said, interrupting his thoughts. At Kurt’s raised eyebrow, he shifted from one foot to the other and said, “I’d like to know what this present is. The one that’s back in the R.V.”

“Oh, it’s… It’s nothing,” Kurt said. “Just a DVD.”

“What DVD?” Blaine pressed.

“Our movie,” Kurt answered quietly. “I got you _The Lion King.”_

“Kurt…”

“Because that’s what started it all, right? That’s where we began; that’s where you changed my life, so I thought…”

“No such thing as history,” Blaine murmured, reaching up and cupping his jaw with a little shake of his head. “Who’s the smooth one now?”

Kurt didn’t have space to reply; Blaine twisted his hand into the collar of Kurt’s shirt and gently pulled himself closer. Kurt met his kiss in the middle and sighed into it, letting his hand move along the roughness of Blaine’s stubble. Blaine moved to tug him down onto the sand but Kurt stopped him, wanting to give him one last placeholder present, the one inspired by a story he’d been thinking about ever since Santa Fe.

Pulling his iPod from his pocket, he said, “Dad once told me about the night he and Mom got engaged. After he asked her, she blindfolded him and walked him over to their tape deck, told him to pick out a tape, and the first song that came on was going to be their song.”

“And what was it?” Blaine asked, looking down at the iPod.

 _“Car Wash,”_ Kurt said with a chuckle. “He said they did the jitterbug until they fell over laughing.”

“Is this going where I think it’s going?”

“I was just thinking, even with all the songs we’ve listened to and sung along to and danced to… There isn’t really one that’s _ours.”_

“Are you forgetting _Anything Could Happen?_ It was playing the first time you kissed me,” Blaine reminded him; Kurt closed his eyes, for that song was now forever tainted by harsh but deserved words and bitterest shame.

“Yeah, but…” he trailed off—the thought was surely still as fresh in Blaine’s mind as it was in his own, and this was one moment that he knew could be perfect, however it turned out. “That was April deciding for us. I want us to have one that… That we can dance like idiots to if we have to.”

Silently, he unwound the ear buds that he kept wrapped around the iPod, put one into his own ear and gave the other to Blaine. The trembling was back again, everything feeling a little too full, like he might burst out of his own skin if he didn’t let Blaine hold not just his hand but all of him once more—so he wrapped one arm around Blaine’s waist, hooked his chin over Blaine’s shoulder, closed his eyes, and hit shuffle.

Whatever [the song](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/75648979115) was, it began almost too quietly for Kurt to hear, a gradual building of strumming guitars that he barely recognized. Blaine took his hand, sandwiching the iPod between their skin, and started swaying right there on the sand—he picked up the rhythm straight away, a stark contrast to the cold confines of a cave in Virginia. This was all open air and hope, safe and settled, and as he pulled back to look into Blaine’s eyes, Kurt realized that it couldn’t have been anywhere but here. It couldn’t have been one of many teenage runaway nights, riding their bikes up to Coffin Pond. It couldn’t have been spring break at Hampton Beach, playing cards on the floor of the pavilion until after sunset. It couldn’t even have been being squeezed into one of April’s garden loungers on July fourth, watching the fireworks with Blaine’s breath tickling the back of his neck.

Everything up until now—the flames and heat of Providence; Kurt’s misstep in Philadelphia; their first kiss at land’s end in Key West; ceilings crumbling and falling right in front of them in Gary; a music box containing a train ticket that concealed the worst intentions and fears; Blaine giving him air as they sank into the freezing waters of Lake Calhoun; the moment he saw the ‘I love you’ in Blaine’s eyes one starry night in New Orleans; resisting Blaine with everything, with words and snow and fire until nothing else remained but to leap and hope to be caught…

There was no such thing as history, because without what had come before, there would be nothing of the present or the future that lay beyond it. Kurt now knew this better than most. No Z without Y, no Y without X, back and back and back… It all led here, to this moment where the score died out and left two people looking at each other in simple silence, held in a suspended second with everything frozen save for their racing hearts.

 _“In the car on the way to the city, in the morning it was foggy on the windscreen,”_ the singer broke in. _“We talked about the day ahead and shouldn’t we just run away instead.”_

 _“We started to believe our dreams and I just kept driving right past the exit,”_ Blaine sang along, a grin in his voice and his lips brushing Kurt’s ear. “How does that sound?”

Kurt smiled into his shoulder— _home, love, future—_ and told him, “Like the end of the beginning.”

 

**Distance: 17,932 miles**

**Additional Listening:** _[Home](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/78149554835)_ by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros; _[This Is The New Year](http://100daysmusic.tumblr.com/post/78149693624) _by A Great Big World__

__*_ _

__**THE END** _ _


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